Book ,WW 
Copyright Is 10 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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I 



I 



WAYSIDE TALKS 



OTHER BOOKS 
BY CHARLES WAGNER 



r 

The Simple Life, The Better Way, By the Fireside, On 
Life's Threshold, My Appeal to America 



WAYSIDE TALKS 



By 

CHARLES WAGNER 

Author of The Simple Life 

Translated from the French by Gertrude Hall 




McClure, Phillips & Co. 
New York 



1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
TwoCoDies Received 
APR 10 I90f 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS CL XXc. No 

'copy b. 



COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY 
MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 



Published, March, 1906 N 



I 

00 

CONTENTS 

PAGE 

At the Hospital ........ 3 

To the Fields 6 

Cradles 9 

The White Cap 11 

The Two Forgotten Ones 13 

A Sad Exchange 15 

Those Who Love Each Other Quarrel . 17 

A Child's Questions 20 

Wasted Labour 24 

Love and Tyranny . 27 

Dark Pathways 30 

Pink and Black 35 

Under the Great "Trees 37 

The Sand-Merchant's Son 42 

The Broken Branch ....... 46 

Young Ravens and Young Children . . 49 

The Old Oak-Tree 52 

The Coal-man's Duckling . 55 

The Prisoner's Song 58 

v 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Grandfather's Room 62 

At the Mercy of Wind and Wave ... 65 

Dog-Shearers and School-Masters ... 68 

Mr. Close-Fist's Five-Franc Piece ... 70 

The Discovery of Good 75 

Grandmother's Crutch 77 

There is a Good God for the Children . . 80 

The Cork 83 

The Shell 86 

The Eyes Which See Not : the Ears Which 

Hear Not 90 

No Connection With Tobacco .... 92 

The Lesson of the Grasshoppers ... 95 

Man or Dummy 99 

The Passing Strangers 103 

The Roofer's Rope 107 

Portrait of an Old Woman Ill 

A Proverb at Fault 116 

The Point of View 119 

For Papa's Birthday 124 

Wings 127 

The Days That Are No More .... 129 

Borrowing and Expending 132 

Proprietors All 137 



CONTENTS vii 

PAGE 

The Rabbits of the Pasteur Institute . . 144 

Unflattering Analogy 147 

Apples .150 

Friendship 152 

The Veteran 155 

The Clog-Maker and the Swallow . . .158 

Christ the Smuggler 164 

On the Threshold of Centuries .... 166 
Old Christmases 171 

THE CHILDREN'S CORNER 

The Old Man of the Forest and His Wolf 183 

The Pear 192 

The Great Red Egg 197 

Grey-Coat and Satin-Coat 201 

The Story of a Too-Dearly Loved Rabbit 208 

Two Friends 214 

The Gardener's Daughter 219 



WAYSIDE TALKS 



I 



AT THE HOSPITAL 




'HITE and clean between their 
spotless curtains, stand the rows 
of beds in the long hospital ward, 



all just alike. But, in those identical settings, how 
different are the faces ! Just so many patients, and 
just so many stories — true stories, too. The num- 
berless paths in which those who suffer there have 
walked, have converged for a few days to a single 
point. They have come from everywhere, and 
through such different sequences of circumstances, 
that their material proximity now to one an- 
other, only brings out more strongly the con- 
trast of situations. There is from one bed to 
the next but a single step: it sometimes divides 
two worlds. 

The woman at whose bedside that workman 
and his two little girls have come to sit, is getting 
up from typhoid fever. The gravity of her condi- 



3 



4 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



tion had obliged her to leave her family to receive 
attendance here. Long has the anguish been, cruel 
the separation. The danger now is past, her 
strength is returning. Her place is ready for her 
at home. A few more days of convalescence, and 
she will go. The mother will be given back to the 
children, the wife to the husband, and the happi- 
ness of the reunited family will be the greater for 
all that has been suffered. Joy therefore illumines 
their foreheads and shines in their eyes. There is 
around that narrow bed such a radiance of smil- 
ing faces that the light actually seems brighter 
there than elsewhere. 

In the next bed lies asleep another woman. She 
is young, but her hair is quite white, her closed 
eyes are ringed with shadow; her sunken cheeks 
and thin hands are paler than the linen against 
which they rest. Six months she has lain there, 
nailed to the same spot, which she will leave only 
for the grave. She was found one day, half-dead, 
in a room where she was perishing from loneli- 
ness and want, in the clutch of an incurable dis- 
ease. This woman had wealth once; her husband 



AT THE HOSPITAL 5 

wasted it and disappeared, no one knows where. 
As for her children, they sleep in the churchyard. 
Alone in the world, no one is waiting for her, no 
one comes to see her, no one will mourn for her. 
But she does not complain. There is, in that feeble 
and vanquished body, a power of resignation be- 
fore which a man involuntarily bows. It is not 
stoicism; it is not the result of a reasoned and for- 
mulated faith; nothing appears at the surface, ex- 
cept, now and then, a prayer, little more than a 
sigh, with a childish accent which melts the heart 
and makes it feel God. I do not know what her 
creed may be, nor if she would understand what 
we call by that name. But such simplicity in the 
face of pain and death is worth more than any 
declaration of faith. Certainly, the spirit of Jesus, 
in its most intimate and mysterious essence, has 
been at work there. Overcome by the moral great- 
ness revealed to me in that wretchedness, I seem 
to feel floating above that sleep — her last, perhaps 
— like a breath from Heaven, the words : " He that 
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
liver 



6 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



TO THE FIELDS 

YOUNG swans raised far from the 
water, young captive swallows kept 
from joining the flock of their com- 
panions, when these spread their wings for the land 
of sunshine, feel an unconquerable homesickness 
for which the tenderest care cannot console 
them. 

What must be going on in the minds of little 
children, descended from peasant races saturated 
with the life of the fields, and now living in the 
garrets of Paris, in the gloom of courts where 
there is not sufficient air and sunlight even for 
the blades of grass between the paving-stones ? 

There was once a very pale little boy. His world 
was a blind-alley in a suburb; his horizon closed 
by walls and chimney-pots; his sky, a narrow 
strip, very far overhead, between two rows of 
roofs. He had never seen any water flow but such 
as goes into the sewer, nor any garden bloom but 
such as can hold upon a window-ledge. One might 
often see him sitting, sad, with wide-open eyes, 



TO THE FIELDS 



7 



dreaming of faraway things which he could 
neither understand nor find names for. His par- 
ents became anxious. Some one, quick to see the 
signs which sorrow stamps upon the faces of chil- 
dren, offered to send him to spend a summer in 
the country. Behold him on his way, with a small 
colony off for the holidays, and plunged from one 
day to the next into an absolutely different life. 
It was a revelation. Everything seemed to him 
at once new and long-known. He met things of 
which he had until then not even known the 
names, as if they had been old acquaintances. 
The day was a continual round of surprises, dis- 
coveries, joyful exclamations. 

In short, he for the first time felt himself in his 
element. The air intoxicated him, the flowers 
touched his heart. He spent long hours of the day 
watching the fishes disport themselves in the 
water, and, at night, the stars kindling their fires 
in the illimitable sky. As for little new-hatched 
chickens, lambs, horses, he had for them such 
caresses as are reserved for friends after long ab- 
sence. After the unrelated surroundings among 
which he had pined, these true kindred surround- 



8 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



ings laid firm hold upon him. To day-long ardent 
activity, baths of light and sunshine, succeeded 
deep restorative slumbers. And when he at last 
returned to his home, he brought such a fund of 
vigour and gaiety, he was so brown with sun-tan, 
that his parents could not believe their eyes. But 
they soon perceived that his heart had not come 
home with him. He had left it behind, among the 
hedges, the country-roads, the meadows, in the 
shady woods where there are strawberries for 
gathering and the birds sing. 

He talked about these tilings all the time, de- 
scribing them, planning to return among them. 

One day, the following spring, he secretly posted 
a letter to the people with whom he had stayed in 
the country. He begged the farmer to engage him 
as a farm-hand, to work in the fields or the sta- 
ble, indeed, in any capacity — only, let it be as 
soon as possible. He should require very little; he 
would, if necessary, sleep in the hay. 

His wish did not find fulfilment, in that form. 
At the age of ten, one has not all the qualities 
requisite for a farm-labourer. But the peasant is 
expecting his little friend for another summer 



CRADLES 



9 



vacation, during which the boy may become 
more strongly confirmed in his vocation and re- 
new his alliance with the soul of the fields. 

CRADLES 

CHRIST once said: "Foxes have holes 
and the birds of the air have nests, but 
the Son of Man hath not where to lay 
His head." I have often been reminded of that 
melancholy word, watching the fate of the chil- 
dren of the people in our large cities. How is room 
to be found for them, tiny guests, cast up on the 
shores of life like a shipwrecked crew ? Very often, 
hardly have they arrived than they are sent off 
into the country. The mother has only the suffer- 
ings of maternity, none of its joys. She loves a 
little unknown, away off in some province. He 
will in time come back to her, but the period of 
infinite pretty ways and delicious surprises will 
be past. He will be a little stranger, repining for 
his nurse. He will learn to love his mother after 
introduction. They will soon find each other, of 
course, and love each other tenderly; but how 



10 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



many good kisses lost ! Only the mother can know 
the heart-hunger and pain involved in such 
arrangements. 

All however are not sent away. Well or ill, room 
is made for them. A cradle is always a touching 
sight. In the poorest, smallest room, it forms the 
point around which everything revolves, as one 
cannot fail instantly to feel. If it be only a basket, 
its poverty moves us all the more: we involuntar- 
ily think of the manger of Bethlehem. Sometimes 
the cradle, however primitive, fills too much 
space: the child is given a corner of the bed. 

I once met a vegetable-vender who had in- 
stalled her baby upon a corner of her little cart, 
between the baskets of strawberries and bunches 
of turnips and carrots. Thus at least she had him 
constantly under her eyes. He slept there peace- 
fully, through all the uproar. Street-cries, rattle of 
omnibuses, barking of dogs, the jolting of his 
travelling cradle, nothing disturbed him. 

As for care, believe me, he lacked nothing. And 
yet! When one has seen in the fragrant, shady, 
hushed woods, the soft-lined nests rocking to the 
murmur of the wind, and the little birds living in 



THE WHITE CAP 11 

the happy liberty of nature, one feels himself 
seized with a profound compassion for the chil- 
dren of men who have such trouble to find a place 
to lay their heads. 

THE WHITE CAP 

SHE may be seen at any time, always in 
the same place, the good old woman 
with the white cap bending over her 
needlework. She makes, framed by the window, 
in that corner of an unfrequented street, an im- 
movable picture, in which as far back as any one 
can remember nothing has changed. Seasons fol- 
low each other, children grow up, conscripts leave 
on military duty and come back again, the good 
old woman is still sewing. 

A young naval officer, one of her neighbours, 
embarked ten years ago for the colonies, and re- 
cently returned. He had been around the world 
again and again, had met with storms, battles, all 
the emotions of a very active life. In his absence, so 
many things had changed! Streets and squares 
had different names and a new aspect, many old 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



comrades were missing at the roll-call. The old 
lady was still sewing at the window, as he had 
seen her when he left. 

Beneath that never-changing white cap, lives a 
single fixed remembrance. The poor old woman 
has lost everything and it has affected her mind. 
Her husband has been sleeping in the churchyard 
these many years. Her son, child of misfortune, 
takes no thought for her: he is worse than dead, 
he is lost. . . . 

So she spends her days thinking, thinking of a 
dear little daughter who died in tender youth, and 
whose winsome image fills her whole mind. Long 
ago, the little grave, bought at such cost of effort, 
disappeared from the cemetery to make room for 
other graves. But beneath a faded child-portrait, 
flowers, lovingly cared for, entertain the devotion 
which can no longer be expended upon the grave, 
and when All-Souls Day comes, the narrow room 
is sweet with nosegays and wreaths, among which 
floats a murmur of prayers. 

God hear them, the prayers of the poor old 
woman, who sews the whole day long, sometimes 
weeps, but never complains. 



THE TWO FORGOTTEN ONES 13 



THE TWO FORGOTTEN ONES 

THE great room in which Christmas has 
celebrated its memories and lavished its 
gifts slowly becomes deserted. The joy- 
ous swarm of children disperses in the streets, 
each one showing what he has received, relating 
what he has seen. In the vast hushed room where 
the lights are going out, only the fir-tree has re- 
mained, wrapped in dreaming. One last taper is 
still flickering, and its dying light faintly illumines 
an object hidden between two inopportunely 
thick branches. It is a pretty doll, with blue eyes, 
pink cheeks, and luxuriant fair hair, who aim- 
lessly holds out her little chubby arms. No one 
discovered her. Her charms were overlooked. She 
has her trouble for her pains, poor little pretty 
forgotten thing. 

Upon the bed of pain where she has reached 
convalescence after a cruel illness, a little girl is 
sitting and seems to be waiting. It is Christmas 
evening, the evening of surprises for children. 
Will there not be ? for her too, some surprise? 



14 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



Alas, the poor household, where illness has added 
itself to need, finds it hard enough to furnish the 
necessary without thinking of the superfluous. 
But the child, a few days before, had seen a little 
playfellow who told her of a Christmas-tree and 
promised to bring her playthings. It is time the 
friend should arrive. ... Is there not a 
noise of footsteps on the stairs ? It surely must be 
she. . . . But the footsteps die away, the 
door remains closed. Other steps draw near and 
pass on, and the hours too pass: the friend does 
not come. At last, weary of waiting, and giving 
up all hope, the sick child drops back upon her 
pillow, sobbing, "Forgotten!" 

No, poor little one, you are not forgotten, any 
more than the doll left on the tree. The same hand 
that suspended the latter out of the range of the 
searching eyes, soon will find it and will bring it 
to you. You are destined for each other, that is 
sure, and will lose nothing by waiting. Never will 
a dollie have found a tenderer mother, nor a lit- 
tle girl a more entrancing dollie. Then where 
will our great sorrows be ? Forgotten ! 



A SAD EXCHANGE 



15 



A SAD EXCHANGE 

A FINE rain has been falling since 
morning. Upon the slimy pavement, 
the horses slip and fall. Fog blurs the 
trees, the roofs, fills the interminable streets, and 
the passers look out of humour. It is a gloomy hour. 
Men and things seem to agree in saying: "It's a 
hard life!" 

On one of the steep roads climbing toward 
Belleville, there is a cart in trouble. The man, 
harnessed in front, stiffens himself and tugs; with 
an effort that makes him nearly touch the ground, 
he tries to drag it out of the mud. A woman and 
two children push at the wheels. Nothing does 
any good. Decidedly, for them it is a hard life! 
What a horror, to move in such weather! The 
poor creatures whole furniture is piled upon that 
cart. Not much, of course, only the strictly neces- 
sary : a little bedding, a table, a few chairs, a few 
simple cooking utensils hanging here and there. 
The luxuries of life are represented by a chilly 
canary-bird, shivering in his cage. But, little as 
there is, it is for the moment too much. The load 



16 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



is beyond the strength of the draught-horse. At 
last, two passers, two Samaritans, are moved to 
pity. With vigorous arms they push the vehicle 
and hoist it to the top of the rise. 

Chilled through, wet, family and furniture ar- 
rive at nightfall at the new abode. Alas, dark and 
dilapidated, it is the very twin of the one they 
have left. The removal will mean for the family 
just a wasted Sunday, a little more damage done 
to the furniture, and an illness, perhaps. But, in 
their old quarters, they had exhausted their credit. 
They hope to make a fresh start in more propi- 
tious surroundings. In the five years elapsed since 
they came to live in the city, they have proceeded 
in this manner some half a dozen times. 

Far away, in the place of their birth, the hum- 
ble roof they deserted is falling to ruin. Grass 
invades the floors, spiders weave across the win- 
dows; the brook ripples, the flowers are beautiful, 
but all for nobody's benefit. Why did they leave 
this woodland nook ? Was not their earlier pov- 
erty affluence compared with to-day's wretched- 
ness ? Oh, mysterious attraction of great cities, 
aptly compared to the fascination of the abyss! 



THOSE WHO LOVE QUARREL 17 

A few tales told at evening around the fire have 
sufficed to turn the heads of these children of the 
country. The familiar solitude, where the hum- 
blest has his place, where the trees and rocks 
become old friends, they have exchanged these 
for the desperate solitude of the great human 
desert, where the individual is lost in the crowd, 
leaving no more trace of his passing than the 
flight of a bird. 

And to think that in so doing, these good peo- 
ple, with thousands of others, have helped to cre- 
ate one of the most appalling factors of the social 
problem : the depopulation of the country and the 
overcrowding of the great cities. 

THOSE WHO LOVE EACH OTHER, 
QUARREL 

PROVERBS such as this one are made 
for clever people, that is to say for such 
as do not take them literally or use 
them as axioms. Very often, in fact, a proverb is 
at fault. And, to speak only of this one, I should 
advise no one to think well of quarrels by regard- 



18 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



ing them as indications of love or at least affection. 

How many people must be thought passionately 
attached to each other, if one should take as proof 
their fierce quarreling; how many, on the other 
hand, must be suspected of a lack of affection, 
since they never express it by conflict or debate. 
The truth is that quarrels are common as weeds. 
Among human miseries, they are one of the most 
trivial and most troublesome, aggravating the 
weight of all the others, while love and friendship 
are rare indeed, like those precious flowers which 
bloom far apart. Nothing therefore could be 
less justified than the saying: "Those who love, 
quarrel." 

Which does not prevent the malicious little 
proverb from containing a grain of truth, receiv- 
ing daily illustrations of the most unexpected and 
diverting. There is involved in this a most inter- 
esting psychological problem. Have no fear, I will 
not elucidate it here. But you will allow me to tell 
you, in that relation, the story of an excellent 
couple. 

They had loved each other fifty years. They 
had shared everything, struggled side by side, 



THOSE WHO LOVE QUARREL 19 

walked hand in hand through pleasant ways and 
over steep and stony ones. They had often wept 
together over beloved graves. Every bit of good 
fortune and every trial had united them more 
closely. Their relation to each other preserved a 
freshness, an ingenuous simplicity, infinitely touch- 
ing in view of their white hair. In spite of all this, 
they quarrelled bitterly and frequently. In fun, 
you will say. Not at all. They quarrelled in earn- 
est, although almost always over trifling subjects, 
which assumed in their eyes the importance of 
matters of state. Now war would break out with 
reference to their numerous grandchildren, whom 
one of them judged severely, the other leniently. 
Now they would grow hot over politics; but the 
habitual battle-ground was their common recol- 
lections. Never could one of them tell the least 
incident without the other interrupting to correct or 
protest. Between two snatches of narrative, there 
was invariably a pause to dispute over some date, 
the bill of fare of some meal, some nothing. Neither 
could endure than any incident whatsoever should 
not have left upon the mind of the other the same 
imprint exactly as upon his own. 



20 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



These daily conflicts could but end by being 
painful. An outsider would have concluded that 
they were an ill-mated couple. The initiated knew 
better. I remember the subject of their last quar- 
rel: the point was whether thirty years before, at 
the christening of their last daughter, the com- 
pany at table had numbered fourteen as papa 
affirmed, or fifteen, as was maintained by mamma. 
There was a terrible to-do. 

On the next day, alas! Papa was no more; he 
had fallen asleep in the evening, never to wake. 
She survived him a few weeks, wandering about 
like a shadow, then she went to join him. . . . 
For those two, at least, the proverb spoke true: 
" Those who love each other, quarrel." 

A CHILD'S QUESTIONS 

IT was in the Bois de Boulogne, toward five 
in the afternoon. The carriages rolled past, 
bearing along their brilliant, motley com- 
pany; the crowd of the curious looked on. Little 
Paul stood on the sidewalk near his papa, and 
lost no detail of the passing pageant. Suddenly, a 



A CHILD'S QUESTIONS 21 

workman passed, in his work-clothes, his hands 
and face slightly begrimed. His figure was strik- 
ing, as seen against that background of elegant 
folk, and the child was struck by the contrast. 

S( Papa, what is the use of workmen ? " 

" What is the use of them ? I will tell you. With- 
out the working-people, you would die of hunger; 
you would have neither roof to shelter you, clothes 
to cover you, nor a bed to lie upon. You admire 
the beautiful ladies and fine gentlemen driving 
past in their equipages. Well, from the lace on the 
parasols and the flowers on the hats, down to the 
wheels on the carriages, the workmen have made 
all. They made this road, too, planted the trees 
along this walk, constructed the seats, built the 
bridges. From Notre Dame and the Pantheon, 
from the top of the Eiffel tower to the pavement, 
there is in Paris neither a stone nor a piece of iron 
but some workman prepared and placed it where 
it is. 

"Every bit of bread is owed to the long and 
patient labour of peasants, who sow under the rain 
and wind, to reap in the heat of the dog-days. 
Everything is based upon work. The workman 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



who passed a moment ago must be a mechanic of 
some sort. He is called a manual labourer, because 
his work is done with his hands. There are work- 
men of another kind, working with their mind: 
engineers, scientists, physicians, thinkers, pro- 
fessors, artists, etc. Humanity, to subsist, needs 
all those workers. As we all benefit by their effort, it 
is the duty of each to try in his turn to make him- 
self of use. The worth of a man is measured by 
the effort he makes for the good of his fellow-men. 
The great question, therefore, with regard to 
every man is precisely the one you asked me a 
moment ago, without suspecting its importance: 
What is the use of him ? " 

"Then tell me, papa, what is the use of these 
well-dressed, fine-looking people we see out for a 
walk or taking the air in their carriages ? " 

"These people, dear child, belong to two cate- 
gories. Some of them are resting from their work. 
There are men among them for whom an hour of 
relaxation is a great benefit. After their well-de- 
served recreation, they will return to their occu- 
pations with all the more zest. But there are others, 
among those you see here, who spend their lives 



A CHILD'S QUESTIONS 23 

resting. They do nothing, but live and enjoy the 
work of others. Those are the useless and the para- 
sites. Their inactivity is mere sloth, which means 
vice and shame. They are under God's reproof; 
just men hold them in horror. Better lie under- 
ground with the dead, than pass among the living 
doing nothing." 

"Papa, I should like to know how I can be of 
use ? " 

"You, my son, can for the moment be only of 
a restricted usefulness. Your duty is to prepare 
yourself to be a useful man later on. You fulfil 
that duty by obeying and learning as well as you 
can. When we shall have ascertained by watch- 
ing you what your capabilities are, we will help 
you to choose your career. Work of the mind and 
work of the body are equally estimable. The main 
point is that a man shall do well that which he 
has to do. Your father has but one wish with re- 
gard to you: it is that whether a thinker or an 
artisan, you should be a good workman." 



24 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



WASTED LABOUR 

WHAT a beautiful harvest ! From the 
top of the hill it may be seen, a 
rolling expanse, dappled with the 
swiftly-coursing shadows of the clouds. Like green 
islands, the spreading apple-trees emerge from the 
sea of corn. The air is filled with the humming of 
bees and the incessant concert of crickets and lo- 
custs, above which resounds cheerily the song of 
the quail. There is joy everywhere and happy 
fertility, the reward of long labour. Through the 
rustle of the myriad stalks, bending and recover- 
ing in the wind, one almost thinks he hears the 
music of the outpoured grains of golden wheat. 
Come, now, diligent labourer, the furrows are 
ready for you, to pay you a hundredfold for your 
pains ! 

Two hours later, the same horizon encloses a 
very different scene. Uprooted trees, ruined corn- 
fields, here and there the earth itself horribly gap- 
ing. Everywhere wreckage, mutilation, fearful 
traces of a devastating force. One might suppose 



WASTED LABOUR 25 



that War had been this way, with a hundred 
squadrons of artillery at a furious gallop, scatter- 
ing fire and bullets like an infernal cloud-burst. 
Everything trampled, torn to tatters. Vainly 
would you try to ascertain which was rye, wheat, 
or oats. There is nothing left on the ground but 
shapeless debris, among which, upheaved and 
thrown topsy-turvy, tree-trunks and torn limbs of 
trees. And over this desolate expanse, the poor 
peasants are seen wandering, looking for their lost 
harvest, as one looks for the slain after the bat- 
tle. They point out to one another the little dead 
birds, the killed wild creatures, the trees struck 
by lightning, shattered into splinters, and here 
and three some huge hailstone half melted in a 
cart-rut. 

Poor creatures! what is left them but eyes to 
weep with ? And, in truth, all have tears in their 
voice. It is heart-rending. 

There is nothing so demoralizing as wasted 
labour. How many there are who cannot stand up 
under it, and who let their arms drop unnerved! 
The labourer gets back his grip upon himself. He 



26 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



dries his tears that he may see clearly, and takes 
up his work again. He is an admirable example of 
the man who can begin afresh. By his tranquil 
courage, his faculty for struggling and getting up 
again after defeat, he recalls the sailor. In spite of 
the difference between the scenes of their activity, 
the hands which hold the plough have marked 
points of likeness with those which set the sails. 
Alike, they know how to pray and to toil. Alike, 
they need, in order to retain their strength, to hope 
in God, who dispenses life in spite of the powers of 
death. To-morrow these same fields will be 
sown for a new harvest, and hope will flourish 
above devastation. Here are lessons, among these 
humble and rough workers, for languid wills, and 
for the chronic tremblers, frightened at a nothing, 
— a ridiculous breed, always expecting to drown 
on dry land, and to starve in the midst of abund- 
ance. 

God keep you, friendly reader, and give you good 
courage in your troubles, especially in your wasted 
labours ! 



LOVE AND TYRANNY 27 



LOVE AND TYRANNY 

The Child : How I love my little wren ! She has 
everything she can need. This soft nest to sleep in ; 
these perches and that hoop to jump up on and 
play and swing. In her drinking-cup the water is 
fresh and clear; her seed-dish is filled with the 
choicest grain. 

And this cage, her house, is so pretty, so dainty ! 
How happy she must be in it, close guarded from 
want and danger, and how she must pity her poor 
companions who have nothing but a branch to 
perch upon; the rain wets them, the storm blows 
upon them, cats lie in wait for them below, and 
hawks above, in the clouds. " 

The Father : I regret, dear child, that this wren 
who sings so sweetly, should not be able to express 
herself in our language. She would undoubtedly 
have a thousand amiable things to say to you in re- 
turn for your care. But I believe I know for a cer- 
tainty that with all the reserve, all the delicacy of a 
subtle little creature of her kind, she would ask 
your permission to express a wish. " 

"What wish, dear father?" 



28 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



" The wish to live like her fellow-wrens, to seek 
her food from day to day in the furrows and the 
road, to build her own nest, in the shadow of the 
hedge she prefers, to fly as she chooses, here and 
there, scattering her song to all the echoes of the 
woods. " 

" Is it possible ? But, father, that wish would be 
unreasonable in the last degree ! How many pleas- 
ant things she would miss, my pretty little wren. 
She would be cold, she would be hungry, and at 
night, when she slept on some branch with her 
head under her wing, she would be in danger of 
falling into the claws of the wicked owls who can 
see in the dark. " 

" That is true, my child. Nevertheless, she would 
be leading the life for which God created her, 
whilst you are forcing upon her a very different 
one. She would have liberty, whilst she is now 
a prisoner. Captivity is so great a misfortune 
that all the advantages with which it can be sur- 
rounded are but as flowers concealing a chain. The 
chain is not any less heavy because of them. 
Wherefore, believe me, dear child, if your wren 
could speak she would beg you to give her back 



LOVE AND TYRANNY 29 



her freedom, and, as you are so fond of her, you 
can do no less than open her cage. " 

"Oh, father, do not say such a thing! I could 
not do it. It would make me too unhappy. That I 
should give up my wren is not possible. If she were 
no longer where I could see her, I should feel as if 
she were dead. I love her too much to let her go. " 

That is our fashion of loving one another, in far 
the greatest number of cases. Our affections are 
varieties of egotism. We intend that those we cher- 
ish shall be happy not in their own way, but in 
ours. 

If there is anything more heart-breaking than 
our hatred and the evil it produces, it is the spec- 
tacle of our tyrannical love. There are many in the 
world, who, like the wren belonging to the child, 
are loved too much, and for their misfortune. 
They are loved to the annihilation of their tastes, 
their capacities, their will, their convictions even. 
In a word, they are loved to death. 

There are children, so protected, so pampered, 
so surrounded with care, that they suffocate. When 
they come to grief, every one cries out : " What more 
could have been done for them ? " Nothing, assur- 



30 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



edly, if it can be supposed that God made the 
bird for the cage, as man made the cage for the 
bird. 

Certain men, endowed with energy and intelli- 
gence, have been brought to naught by over- 
fearful affection. There is a very genuine but 
blind tenderness, whose work is to produce in- 
activity, and, in course of time, the death of the 
soul. 

To love is not enough ; we must add to love dis- 
cernment, respect for the liberty of others, and for 
the integrity of their spiritual life. It is not with 
reference to the body alone that the command- 
ment was spoken : " Thou shalt not kill. " 

DARK PATHWAYS 

IT was the night of Saint Sylvester. Outside, 
the snow, driven by a whistling wind, pass- 
ed and pattered on the window-panes like 
fine sleet. In the little isolated house, the family 
was gathered close together, crowding around the 
fire. There were the grandmother, the mother, and 
four little children. At a single glance, one might 



DARK PATHWAYS 31 



see that the centre of all those lives was the grand- 
mother. A nestful of larks does not huddle more 
closely under the maternal wing than those little 
children and their mother pressed under grand- 
ma's protection, which seemed to wrap them 
about. The poor young widow and her orphaned 
little ones were, in very truth, like frightened birds 
after a storm. So many blows had fallen upon their 
hearts in the course of the last year! The father 
slept in the churchyard. His death had brought to 
its close a period of purest happiness, and broken 
up the existences of his wife and children. Deprived 
of their natural protector, they had taken refuge in 
the little house where, for years, grandma had 
lived alone. And now, on this last day of the year, 
their thoughts were painfully reverting to the past. 
It seemed to them that misfortune had fastened 
upon them for ever and all, and the mournful wail 
of the wind filled their hearts with dark forebod- 
ings. Why has God so stricken us ? Why such 
blows upon the heads of the little children ? Have 
we, more than others, deserved this severity ? Why 
does God separate those who love each other, and 
often leave together those who only give each 



32 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



other pain, and poison each other's lives? This 
sort of question fell continually from the young 
widow's lips, while bitterness filled her soul. She 
had reached a state of inward revolt against what 
seemed to her an injustice of God's. Grandma 
listened to these sighs and recriminations in silence, 
and continued to work on her tapestry. 

She had just finished, in the bunch of flowers she 
was lovingly embroidering upon the canvas, an 
adorable little forget-me-not. Having put the last 
stitch to this delicate detail, she smiled upon her 
daughter and the little children. Then, shaking her 
head and addressing the young widow, she said : 

" It is strange, dear child. Your fate resembles 
mine. I too, was separated from your father in the 
midst of happiness and youth, left with restricted 
means, with young children to feed and to bring 
up. 

" But the part played during my misfortunes by 
my religious beliefs was very different from what I 
see as likely in the case of yours. You seem always 
to think of God for the purpose of asking why He 
has afflicted you. When I thought of Him, I re- 
membered One whose wish was to heal me, to 



I 

DARK PATHWAYS 33 

comfort, to strengthen me. I called upon Him in 
my sorrows and difficulties. I brought all my bur- 
dens to Him, and said to Him with our Saviour: 
* Deliver us from evil. ' And I believe I was acting 
more wisely than you, not only for the peace of my 
heart, but from the standpoint of the respect owed 
to our Father who is in heaven. Nothing is inde- 
pendent of His will and His providence, not even 
the evil that comes to us through human wills. 
But, whereas it is always difficult to say where- 
fore we have been stricken, nothing is safer than 
to say: 'God wishes to help us.' Whether the 
harm we suffer be the result of our sins, or the sins 
of others, or of mysterious and divine causes, one 
thing forever remains true : God cares for our good. 

" I have built my whole life and my whole faith 
upon that. From it exclusively I have drawn in- 
spiration. I have never asked for explanations of 
the inexplicable, nor cried out in accusation against 
men, still less against God. Dear child, there is but 
one help for human sorrows, one star above dark 
pathways: it is to rely absolutely upon the hand 
which guides the stars. Happy they who find in 
their hearts, in their experience, in the teachings 



34 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

and inspiration of the Gospels, sufficient food to 
sustain that confidence. Commit thy ways unto 
the Eternal, and never ask Him wherefore? For if, 
before finding hope and comfort, you were forced 
to wait for an answer to that question, you must 
fall to despair. You are, in fact, incapable of div- 
ing deep enough, or reaching high enough, to find 
such an answer. Let us have the courage to be 
children, and lean upon the will of the Father. 
You see the work I am doing. Look at the wrong 
side of this tapestry. What an inextricable tangle 
of threads! What an apparently senseless con- 
fusion ! One would suppose it the work of chance 
or of a madman. But if you look at it from the 
right side, you will see those same threads de- 
fining regular forms. Thus it is with our fives. If 
they appear to us without plan, unjustifiable, 
contradictory, the reason is that we see them from 
the wrong side. The Everlasting God sees the 
other side, and that which is dark to us is lumin- 
ously clear to Him. " 

Commit thy ways unto the Eternal. 



PINK AND BLACK 



85 



PINK AND BLACK 

IN the dining-room, the table is spread for the 
expected guests at the evening meal. After 
a last touch to the snowy table-cloth and nap- 
kins, mamma has left the room, full of business, 
with an injunction to papa to keep an eye on baby. 

It is so pleasant for father and son to play to- 
gether, while waiting, with an equal appetite, for 
dinner. The paternal knee is put to the uses of a 
horse, stories are told, mad pranks indulged in: it 
is delightful. Do not ask which of the two, father 
or child, is having the more fun : No one has ever 
been able to tell. 

The guests, however, are long coming. Baby, 
after a time, starts on an exploring expedition 
around the room, and papa falls to musing. 

Yonder, beyond the roofs, the March sun is 
setting. Rosy tints, fading fast, melt in the air. The 
day is softly going to sleep. And the father, tired 
from daily work, yields himself, without resistance, 
to the fascination of calm evenings. His whole 
being has floated off upon his dream, far away, far 
away. 



36 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



" Where golden clouds are melting in the blue. . ." 

And what is baby about, during this time ? 

Behind papa's back, he, too, is wholly absorbed, 
not in any dream, but in action. He has got pos- 
session of an inkstand. 

Installed at the table, using his finger as a paint- 
brush, he is making a drawing on the table-cloth. 
His work entrances him: that is plain. The joy of 
creation sparkles in his eyes. At every black line 
upon the white cloth, his face lights up still more 
brilliantly. Finally, unable to restrain himself be- 
fore his completed masterpiece, the child suddenly 
cries out, clapping his hands: "Papa, papa, see 
baby's beautiful picture!" 

At that voice, the father starts, seized by a dark 
presentiment. He turns about quickly, sees at a 
single glance the extent of the disaster, and finds 
no word but the smothered exclamation : " Wretch- 
ed young one, what have you done ? " At the same 
moment, mamma opens the door, understands all, 
and cries out : " Mercy upon us ! " 

Caught between these two consternations, baby, 
bewildered and overwhelmed with woe, bursts into 



PINK AND BLACK 37 



bitter weeping. To have thought he was doing 
splendid things, and to meet with such poor 
success ! 

The excess of his grief disarms his parents. 
Their only thought is to comfort baby. Quickly, 
another table-cloth, and all will be mended. 

It is done. Once more the spotless table stands 
in readiness for the guests. Baby dries his tears. 
He has promised never to do it again. The door- 
bell rings: The friends have arrived. They can 
come, all is as it should be in the house. 

Never again, however, when he gazes off 
dreamily into the rosy evening light, will papa be 
able to see the red disk of the sun, without seeing, 
at the same time, in front of it, a little hand all 
smeared with ink. 



UNDER THE GREAT TREES 

THE great trees are going. Our utilitarian 
age has spoken their sentence. What do 
they fetch ? Cumbersome, costly, they 
are doomed to disappear to make room for light 
coppices of rapid growth, which can be cut 



Wayside sermons 



down every twenty years. The line of La Fon- 
taine : 

" Our great grandchildren will praise us for this 
shade," 

is out of harmony with our cry for immediate re- 
sults. We are more inclined to destroy what we 
have received from our predecessors than to 
trouble our minds about our successors. 

I can change nothing of this, of course, but I 
cannot be reconciled to it. I cannot, without a 
pang, see the old forest and the century-old trees 
falling beneath the axe. When I meet upon the road 
carts carrying away the trunks of those ancient 
giants, I feel as if a funeral procession were passing. 
Let us bare our heads before these dead: some- 
thing of ourselves, the best of ourselves, is going 
with them. 

Unhappy he who can see in a tree only rough 
material for the carpenter, the cabinet-maker, or 
the charcoal-burner. He misconstrues the soul of 
things. For there is a soul in the tree, in the for- 
est. The Old Testament calls the cedars of Leb- 
anon the cedars of God. The Eternal planted 



UNDER THE GREAT TREES 39 

them. Something of Himself circulates in their sap 
and sings in their branches. 

Antiquity felt for trees a veneration in which we 
should beware of reading mere idolatry and su- 
perstition. Would God that our spirits, which 
have ridded themselves of all religious supersen- 
sitiveness, had retained something of that pious 
and touching emotion. Let us remember the sa- 
cred woods, the symbolical trees, the olive-tree, 
the oak, dear to the prophets, to the bards, to all 
who walked through that ancient world, trying to 
seize, under the fugitive rustling of leaves, the 
great and mysterious voice of the Eternal. 

The forest was the first temple, and the never- 
equalled model of all sanctuaries. Before the 
Gothic arch reared itself upward and the light 
splintered against the stained glass of cathedral 
windows, the old trees joined their branches arch- 
wise, and the many-coloured leaves let through 
the gold of setting suns. 

The great trees are grave ancestors besides, 
who spread over us protecting arms, tell us old 
stories of long- vanished days, and instil into the 
present the respect of the past. 



40 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



They are further the discreet recipients of our 
confidences. They associate themselves to our 
thoughts, stimulate these, form a rustling com- 
mentary to them. Even as in the murmur of the 
waves, the soul with its changing emotions seems 
expressed in the voices of the forest. Nothing 
equals in sweetness the infinite tenderness of cer- 
tain whispering breezes. They make one think of 
the subtle breath, the still small voice, in which 
Elijah recognized the presence of God. 

When the breeze stirs among the pine-trees, we 
hear sounds of sighing, of sobbing. Every woe 
and every bereavement seems to be lamenting 
through the woods. 

Joyous sounds, like shouts, sometimes run 
through the beech-forest. They suggest youthful 
laughter, dance-music, spirited and light-hearted 
melodies. 

Under the oaks, when they vibrate in the wind, 
we hear manly accents, clarion notes which make 
us think of battle, and incline us to it. 

But it is, above all, in a storm that the forest is 
beautiful. Then it seems to be showing forth in- 
terior struggles, the assaults upon the soul of the 



UNDER THE GREAT TREES 41 

forces unchained against it. Those swelling bil- 
lows of green, those groaning masses of leaves, 
those knotted limbs distorted with effort, those 
firm trunks standing in line like warriors under 
fire, those cries, that roaring, that snapping and 
splintering of wood, and sometimes that destruc- 
tion, fill the spirit with a powerful emotion. We 
identify ourselves for a moment with the storm- 
beaten forest, we follow the hazards of the strife 
with poignant sympathy, as if our own destiny 
were somehow being enacted before us. Man takes 
sides with the tree against the hurricane. And 
when the storm is over, joy fills us to see the 
branches shining in the sun, the thousand rain- 
drops on every leaf glittering like so many infini- 
tesimal bon-fires. But if the tree has been over- 
thrown ! The heart is wrung, and drops a tear over 
it as over the vanquished upon the field of honour. 

Reader, my brother, for whom I write these lines 
in the shade of ancient poplar-trees, I cannot but 
wish you may be responsive to the thought which 
inspires them. The great trees are the symbol of all 
the things which the mercantile spirit declares to 
be useless, but which are indispensable to hu- 



±2 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



manity. Our honour and our welfare are in those 
realities which cannot be weighed in scales, whose 
value cannot be expressed in arithmetical figures. 
A sad world it would be in which one should suc- 
ceed in destroying the very shelter of the soul. 
Beauty, fancy, ideal love, all that makes life worth 
living, would fly away from such a world, as the 
birds fly away from the regions stripped of trees. 
Mercy for the great trees ! Let us preserve forever 
those sacred, mysterious refuges where the bird 
suspends his nest and the soul its dream ! 

THE SAND-MERCHANT'S SON 

JOGGLETY-JOG! Through the suburbs, 
over the huge cobble-stones, the sand-mer- 
chant's cart moves heavily along. Fine yel- 
low sand for the housewives, the innkeepers, sand 
for the bird-cages, for the hens, too, to keep them 
from laying eggs without shells. The sandman 
sells it to any one who wants it, in Utile sacks, and 
pushes on, urging his horse along and crying his 
wares, from morning till evening. 

A rough trade and not very lucrative! It is a 



THE SAND-MERCHANT'S SON 43 

sizeable problem, how to feed a family and a horse 
with the rare coppers it fetches. And yet I saw, 
the other day, a happy little figure framed in the 
setting of that poor trade: it was the sandman's 
little son. 

Imagine a big baby of four, fresh and curly, 
with bare legs, his sleeves rolled up. He was in- 
stalled at the further end of his daddy's cart, and 
was, with mighty fistfuls, filling a little wooden 
bucket. Around him, sand-pies stood in rows, 
more numerous every minute, some already dried 
by the sun, others just out of the oven, still shiny 
with moisture. Now and then the jolting of the 
cart would overturn a few, which were at once re- 
placed by others. Never did baker knead dough 
with as great fervour as the delicious urchin 
kneaded sand. He was wholly absorbed in his busi- 
ness, and gave not a fig for the rest of the world. 
He had sand everywhere, even on his cheeks and 
in his hair. This did not trouble him. From time to 
time, his father would come to fill a sack, and 
touch him with an intention of caress. Little baker- 
man was hardly aware of it. Even his piece of 
bread — and what a piece ! — lay on the floor of 



44 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

the cart, disdained. Not that he was dainty: the 
crust, notched by repeated vigorous bites, testi- 
fied to the contrary ; but the fury of digging and 
pie-making was mightier than hunger. Time to 
eat ? Well, hardly ! He had other fish to fry. After 
making as many pies as necessary, were there not 
mountains to raise, ramparts to build, caves to dig 
and tunnels to pierce ? 

And I said to myself : " How many children who 
have wooden horses and carriages, building-blocks 
and tea-sets, dolls, puppet-shows, Noah's arks and 
everything the toy-shops afford, are not as happy 
as that child!" 

To be happy, what does a child need ? A healthy, 
active spirit, and something upon which to expend 
it. Satisfaction does not depend upon the multi- 
plicity of occupations, but upon their intensity. 
Nowhere is the pre-eminence of the interior life 
more signally shown than in the play of a child. 
That play, with its richness and vividness, is 
wholly a matter of the soul and the imagination. 
A piece of wood, a stone, a nothing, are sufficient 
materials. But that spontaneity can be obstructed 



THE SAND-MERCHANT'S SON 45 



by too much supervision, regulation, and the in- 
trusion of a lot of ready-made toys which leave no 
room for the spirit of invention, the delight of 
creating and fashioning things oneself. 

The abundance of complicated and costly play- 
things makes children early weary, enervates them 
and renders them ungrateful. They yawn in the 
midst of abundance, lose initiative and the power 
of effort. By dint of working without discrimina- 
tion for their happiness, those guilty of this folly 
take away their faculty for being happy. 

That is the reason why so many children of the 
people, provided they do not lack love and the 
things necessary to life, are happier than rich chil- 
dren, and that the little country children, free to 
range the pastures, the fields, the banks of the 
stream, and the pebbly shore of the sea, are kings 
compared to the children of the great cities. 

I would gaily exchange the playthings of the 
most luxurious shop for a heap of sand on the 
edge of the ocean, or even in a sandman's cart. 



46 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



THE BROKEN BRANCH 

IT was the end of March. Here and there, 
white patches in the deep furrows and 
ditches along the roadside showed the last 
of the snow. The woods, still bare, were beginning 
to resound with the singing of blackbirds and tom- 
tits, and assuming that beautiful, live, red colour 
which tells us the leaves are about to appear. Per- 
haps, by close search along the hedges, in the shel- 
tered places, one might have found the first violet, 
hidden among the dry grass. But I was too heavy 
of heart to gather violets. Dark premonitions of 
death oppressed me. Suddenly, in the narrow path 
I was descending, my foot hit against a branch off 
a cherry-tree, freshly lopped. I picked it up. The 
thick swollen buds were just upon the point of 
bursting. I was sorry for it. " Poor fallen branch, 99 
I said to myself, "you will not see the spring!" 
And, as I walked along, I carefully unfolded the 
delicate wrappings of the bud, first brown, then 
green, one inside the other. They contained six 
smaller buds, each the size of a tiny pin head. 
Those were the future flowers. There they were, 



THE BROKEN BRANCH 47 



warmly sheltered, swathed like babies in their 
furry sheath, a marvel of care and foresight, in 
which the germs of life were meant to sleep, pro- 
tected against the winter cold. A whole world 
there enclosed had been only waiting for a little 
sunshine, that it might be born. . . . One 
brutal clip of the pruning-shears and all that had 
stopped short. It made my heart ache. Reverently 
I carried the branch home with me and placed it in 
water upon my desk. 

What I had hoped happened. In a few days the 
buds expanded, burst, and beautiful blossoms 
covered the branch with their perfumed clusters. 

When the breeze blew in through the open 
window, the blossoms shook like so many little 
bells, and I seemed to hear in their scarce-audible 
tinkling a multitude of things of which I here set 
down the faded recollection: 

They said : " We are the little sisters of the stars. 
We whisper upon the dark earth what they pro- 
claim in luminous space. We are feeble voices of 
the great hope. Our life has but a day, but we are 
the ephemeral bearers of an eternal message. Do 
not pity us upon our broken stem. On the edge of 



48 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

the tomb, into which our petals are dropping, our 
smile is but sweeter, our significance more touch- 
ing. Immortal love clothed us in whiteness as pure 
as if we were to live forever. In the sight of that 
love we are not wasted. We serve it by dying as our 
sisters left upon the tree serve it by producing 
fruit. We are in the order of things, we follow the 
path traced for us. The hand that leads all things 
has blessed us. Our faith is sweet and our goal 
certain. " 

As I listened with my heart to those little voices 
which waked around them a murmur of hope, I 
felt near me a presence to which deeper emotion 
attaches than to any other. The spirit which re- 
assures and consoles, the love, tender and strong, 
which shares our woes, gathers up our tears, shines 
through the night of the tomb, enfolded me. And 
to the depths of my being I heard these words : "Let 
not your hearts be troubled. Even the very hairs 
of your head are numbered. Consider the fowls of 
the air, consider the lilies of the field ! " 

Never, therefore, will a branch laden with beau- 
tiful ripe cherries have borne more precious fruit 
than that poor branch cut off in its springtime. By 



RAVENS AND CHILDREN 49 

the will of the Father, it served in an hour of grace 
to preach the good tidings, and be a reminder that 
the symbol of human hope blossomed on Calvary 
upon a branch of dead wood. 

YOUNG RAVENS AND YOUNG 
CHILDREN 

IT was in a district of fertile Normandy, 
dotted in the distance with those great 
screens of trees enclosing farms. Poppies 
glowed and danced among the green waves of the 
corn, and in the clover-patches cows browsed 
around their stakes. In a fallow field, freshly 
ploughed, a flock of crows were fruitfully hunting 
for eggs of insects and earthworms. They were all 
very calm and very assiduous, like seekers who 
forget the rest of the world to devote themselves 
to a single object. 

Among them was one forming an exception. 
He was a young crow, as his voice, which he was 
at the moment using, betrayed. With his bill 
wide open, he was hopping around a stoical old 
crow, whom his performance seemed to leave de- 



50 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



cidedly cold. The young one was cawing, flutter- 
ing, making a veritable nuisance of himself. Now 
he was emphatic, imperious, impudent, and again 
coaxing and plaintive. And his object in all this ? 
His object was simple enough: he was demanding 
to be fed. He desired his old father to exert him- 
self to find juicy bits which he, the young one, 
would swallow at a gulp, and promptly ask for 
more. He wished to continue the traditions of the 
nest, in which the little featherless birds expect 
to be stuffed the whole day long by their parents, 
with no trouble to themselves but to cry famine! 
But the old one did not allow himself to be 
troubled. From time to time, when the scene had 
prolonged itself unduly, he flew a little farther, and, 
as he was preparing to rise, one might see that he 
limped. The latter detail aroused my indignation. 
So that lazy young thing, fat, full-feathered, 
strong, proposed to make his infirm father wait 
upon him ? Why did not he sooner forage for 
two, and feed the one who had so often fed him ? 

You are thinking, are you not, of the children 
who resemble that far from interesting fowl? It 
is but too true, their name is legion, in all classes 



RAVENS AND CHILDREN 51 



of society. To live depending solely upon the ef- 
forts of father and mother, to make them wait 
upon one, to allow them to toil for one, is a com- 
mon practice. Unfortunately, the firmness of the 
old crow is not a common attribute of parents. 
The crow let his young one squawk, knowing that 
presently hunger would force him to drop men- 
dicity and hunt for his own food, as crows of his 
age habitually do. Parents, on the contrary, allow 
themselves to be moved, and the result is a most 
wretched state of things, in which they are first 
accomplices and later victims. To let an old 
mother wait upon one at table, to allow her to 
rise earliest mornings, even when she is infirm, to 
become so used to receiving attentions that one 
no longer sees that those who proffer them are ail- 
ing and more in need of our care than we of theirs, 
is the part of shameful ingratitude. 

Young reader, my friend, beware of resembling 
my young crow. 

As for the old crow, he is shown in ancient 
fables receiving many a tough lesson; but I per- 
ceived the other day that he can give as good as 
ever he got — yes, as good as the best cheese. 



5* 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



THE OLD OAK-TREE 



A 



HUNDRED yards from the an- 
cient forest, in that great empty 
stretch of land, dotted with daisies 



and rushes, stood the old oak-tree. The whole 
country-side was familiar with him. His dome of 
foliage was a landmark upon the horizon. The 
oldest had always seen him there. In memory of 
man no change had come upon him. How many 
wayfarers had halted beneath his boughs! How 
many laborious peasants had come at harvest- 
time to enjoy an hour's rest in the shade of him! 
How many merry-makings had he sheltered! 
Nowhere could one dance so gaily as here! Refuge 
of birds, meeting-place of men, the venerable 
centenarian appeared animated with a mysteri- 
ous life; he seemed to have something like a soul, 
composed of strength and kindness. 

The last hurricane breathed upon him, and I 
find him outstretched upon the earth. A splinter 
of the trunk remains, rooted in the ground, like a 
broken column; one can see now that it was hol- 
low, eaten away to the bark. The crown and the 



THE OLD OAK-TREE 53 



great branches strew the ground in the attitudes 
of lightning-smitten giants. 

These ruins suggest to me a world of thoughts. 
. . . So, the heart of that mighty tree, em- 
blem of endurance and resistance, had b een eaten 
away. While the winds wrestled with him, and 
the weather of the circling seasons worked its 
will upon him, assailing and shaking him from 
without, an invisible force was at work within, 
undermining him from day to day. And in spite of 
it, he yearly resumed his green garb, he concealed 
nests, sheltered slumbers, rustled his leaves in 
concert with the songs of assembled youth! 

He recalled to my mind, this old oak-tree, cer- 
tain men of a particular stamp, whose old age is 
infinitely touching. Varied destinies have passed 
over their heads, the buffeting of the winds has 
not been spared them. And, worse than the blows 
of fortune, interior storms of the soul, gnawing 
cares of every kind have sapped them. But they 
have remained benevolent, frankly kind and smil- 
ing. Proudly they wear the scars of the storm and 
the furrows dug on their foreheads by the lightning. 
As to the inward ravages made by tortures of the 



54 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



intellect or the sensibilities, they shut these close 
in their souls, that they may not darken the days 
of others. 

Generously they encourage the young people, 
heightening the joyousness of their mood by tak- 
ing part in their pleasures. In their neighbourhood, 
our trials seem to us less bitter and our joys 
sweeter. They call so little attention to them- 
selves, that from long looking upon them with 
veneration, long beholding them smiling and im- 
movable, we forget that perhaps they suffer and 
that they are mortal. 

But one day their strength is shattered ; chasms 
of unsuspected sorrows, martyrdoms carefully 
concealed from all eyes, are revealed to us by 
their death. Their goodness then appears in our 
eyes greater by the whole extent of their suffer- 
ing. Impressed by so much moral beauty, tender- 
ness, invincible hope, we learn truly to know 
them only when they have left us. As Jacob, wak- 
ing up at Bethel, exclaimed, " God was in this 
place, and I did not know it ! " we say, above their 
graves : " God was in these men, and we did not 
know it!" 



THE COAL-MAN'S DUCKLING 55 



THE COAL-MAN'S DUCKLING 

BEFORE the black cave of a coal- 
dealer's shop, a crowd of people, all eager 
to see, were jostling one another: Lit- 
tle boys and girls, telegraph-messengers, baker- 
boys with their baskets balanced on their heads ; 
and with every second the crowd grew denser. It 
was already too numerous for the sidewalk and 
had overrun into the street, where the carriages 
were beginning to stop, and the coachmen to 
vociferate. What had happened ? A crime ? A sui- 
cide ? That is what the last arrivals were asking ; 
but as no one knew anything, the only answer 
they got was a shrug of the shoulders. Only the 
first six rows or so of the spectators were in the 
secret. From time to time a shout of laughter 
broke from them, which gave the policeman who 
had hurried to the scene to restore order, a sus- 
picion that the affair could not be of the gravest. 
I am in a position to affirm that it was not, for I 
was in one of the stage-boxes, enjoying myself 
royally. The occasion of that assemblage of peo- 
ple, stopping the traffic of a whole street, was a 



56 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



simple duckling. Xo jest — just a duck of flesh 
and bones. I do not add feathers, because, though 
he was big and plump, he was as yet only clothed 
in the fuzzy down which covers young fowls. And 
tins duckling was taking a bath! He needed it, I 
assure you, for he was a true coal-man's duck. 
His feet and bill, formerly yellow, were inky 
black, and his whole body resembled a shoe- 
brush. He was taking his bath in an earthware 
wash-basin, not with the languid proceeding of a 
school-boy afraid of water, but with admirable 
fervour and animation. His whole body quivered, 
jerked itself up and down; his rudiments of wings 
fluttered frantically: he threw back his head and 
used it on his back like a frictioning-glove. He 
would have liked to swim, to immerse himself, to 
disappear altogether under the water. Alas, the 
basin was so small that the efforts of the young 
duck had no result but to make his tiny bath-tub 
overrun and topple, and every time he lost his 
balance, Homeric laughter shook the assembly. 
The floor of the shop was inundated. As for the 
coal-man, happier than any Barnuni at sight of a 
packed house in ecstasy before his performers, he 



THE COAL-MAN'S DUCKLING 57 



stood there with folded arms, his face expanding 
in a broad grin, which exposed the white teeth of a 
native of Auvergne. 

Suddenly, in the dark-brown water, the duck- 
ling made one last awkward movement which 
completely overturned his tub; and with an inde- 
scribable flop he tumbled head over heels out of 
his bath. 

Poor beastie ! I watched him run away and hide 
under a pile of wood. He seemed dirtier than be- 
fore his bath. 

As I went my way, the thought of that un- 
happy duckling haunted me. I could not but say 
to myself : " There is the counterpart of what most 
men are doing. Alongside of the great life made 
for them by God, they create an existence of their 
own choice and contriving, petty, miserable, 
mean. They forsake the broad, deep currents, the 
springs, the lakes, the rivers, where strength and 
joy flow abundant, and substitute for them a little 
impure water which stains instead of cleansing. 
The narrow systems of philosophers, the re- 
stricted formulas of theologians, the regulations 
of pedants, the laborious and superfine prescrip- 



58 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



tions of a morbid aestheticism, the double-dis- 
tilled pleasures of the worldly and the epicures; 
all these things are after all, compared with real 
life, like the coal-man's wash-basin. The more 
you bathe in it, the less clean you become ! 

THE PRISONER'S SONG 

(Dedicated to a little Skylark of my Friends) 

IT was in Rue Fauconnier, behind the Ly- 
cee Charlemagne. I was walking up and 
down the sidewalk, waiting for the pupils 
to come out. 

Few passers in the street; no carriages; a sur- 
prising quiet, for Paris. 

Why was it that my thought that morning 
seemed more conscious of its fetters, and that I 
found the street narrower and darker than usual ? 
I do not know. But there are hours in which the 
chains of existence seem heavier than in others, 
when life appears more difficult, evil more pow- 
erful, help farther off. And I was living one of 
those hours. 

Such moments can be summed up in the single 



THE PRISONER'S SONG 59 



utterance: " What is the use ? . . ." Every one 
knows what it means. The worst is that the con- 
sciousness of this uneasiness of spirit being in 
great measure one's own fault, makes it often all 
the harder to bear. And, friendly reader, why 
should I conceal it from you ? that was my 
case. 

Suddenly, in one of the wooden cages that hang 
outside the windows, a skylark began to sing, to 
sing in resonant tones which vibrated afar. There 
was in that song irresistible vitality, fervour, truth. 
It instantly penetrated, invaded me, carried me 
along with it. 

The heavy morning mist, the thick atmosphere 
of the narrow streets, the mournful trend of my 
thoughts, all vanished to make room for a beau- 
tiful dream. 

The song melted into a vision of light, colour, 
lovely scenes. Upon an infinite expanse of fertile 
country, green corn-fields rippling in the wind. I 
could see a multitude of labourers at work. Young 
girls laughed, children played, brooks glistened in 
the sun, the shadows of the white clouds slid 
across the meadows, and, high up, high up in 



60 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

the sky, a scarcely perceptible spot on the blue, a 
lark soared further and further upward, shower- 
ing down her pearl-like notes. 

It was the latter detail which called me back to 
reality. Did I not actually hear the song of a cap- 
tive lark ? I began watching her in her cage. Seat- 
ed upon her perch, she sang on and on, her throat 
big with melody. How cramped for room she must 
have felt ! This was plainly to be seen in her quiv- 
ering wings, those little wings accustomed to beat 
in unison with the voice, and soar like it in the 
joy of flight and liberty. As it was, only the song 
could soar; the wings and the little soul impris- 
oned in that graceful body were held back by 
the close-set bars. 

Poor captive, before she had reached the point 
where she was able to sing in that posture, how 
many times must she have beaten her breast 
against the inexorable prison-bars! I bitterly felt 
the sadness of her fate, and the cruelty of man, 
offering a cage to one to whom God had given 
illimitable space. 

And yet she sang, poor little thing, and in this 
corner of Paris cheered more than one human 



THE PRISONER'S SONG 61 



being, like herself shut in a prison: poor women 
crushed by the burdens they must bear, sick peo- 
ple and solitary people, school-boys dreaming 
within the school-room walls of freedom and 
space. She had spoken to me, too, of so many 
things that my heart stirred within me. 

I shall never forget you, little skylark of God. 
It was He who made your wing and who taught 
you your song. You have taught me that man 
must learn to sing in his prison. There is no help 
in beating one's head and wings against the bars; 
none in sitting dumb in a corner and letting de- 
spair slowly corrode one's heart. One must find a 
way out of prison by the inward light, and in 
spite of the sorrowful reality hemming us about, 
sing of light, love, forgiveness, justice. When you 
are singing, little skylark, you forget your wretch- 
edness, do you not, and possess once more all you 
have lost. 

Never did your song seem to me sweeter than 
to-day. It is the symbol of our captive and bruised 
souls, which never can lose the impulse to soar 
toward liberty! In slavery, in anguish, in sin, in 
death even, they still continually repeat the old 



62 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



comforting song which memorable voices brought 
to them from Heaven. 



angels visit us upon its wings. Blessed is the man 
who never loses consciousness of it. 



GRANDFATHER'S ROOM 
RANDFATHER has done a long life's 



over difficulties, he has wearied out ill-fortune. 
His father's goods have increased in his hands. 
The modest farm has become a large estate. The 
house has followed suit: from small and rustic, it 
has grown spacious and comfortable. 

But all these changes have had no power to 
change grandfather's heart. That has remained 
simple as ever. In a corner of that vast house, in 
the midst of all those alterations, he has pre- 
served one corner unaltered : it is his own room. 

The architects talking of symmetry, the fas- 



In that song is the best we know. Liberating 




GRANDFATHER'S ROOM 63 



tidious sons and grandsons, the daughters-in-law 
and the sons-in-law belonging to the elegant world 
— he sent them all about their business. They 
maintained that in a properly built house a single 
style should prevail. Grandfather let them talk. 
He respected the old room, with its old walls, its 
old furniture, its old portraits. All his memories 
are entwined about these. Here it is he likes best 
to rest, to think of former times, and live over 
again his laborious life. 

What will become of Grandfather's room when 
he is no longer there ? Will his grandchildren, who 
are indebted to the old worker for the best they 
are and the best they have, come sometimes to sit 
in it as in a sanctuary ? Or will the room remain 
dark and lonely, slowly invaded by the dust of 
oblivion, until the day when a last effort toward 
symmetry removes it altogether, and sends its 
contents to the old curiosity shop ? 

Poor old keepsakes, sacred family relics, wit- 
nesses of old days, days of struggle, simplicity, 
poverty perhaps .' How differently men regard you, 
according to their own worth. 

Some despise and conceal you. They would 



64 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



erase you like ink-spots, if they could. Their sen- 
timent is that when one has become great and 
important, one should forget his beginnings. All 
that reminds them of the fact that they started 
from a lower rung of the ladder, vexes them. They 
are ashamed of their childhood, of the house of 
their parents, and even of their old parents them- 
selves. 

Happily for the honour and salvation of human- 
ity, there are those who value family recollections 
all the more for being humble. Heeding their 
faithful hearts, they feel that piety toward the 
past is one of the purest sources of strength, not 
in the case of individuals only, but of societies. 

Woe to those who forget their own past! Fools 
and blind, they know not what they do! They do 
not perceive that they are throwing away trea- 
sures, that, while straining to make themselves 
greater, they are in reality diminishing and de- 
stroying themselves. They do not know, when 
they try to drag themselves loose from the com- 
mon soil, that man is like a tree, and that through 
the roots it is that he gets his sap and his vigour. 



AT MERCY OF WIND AND WAVE 65 



AT THE MERCY OF WIND AND WAVE 

AS far as eye could reach, the wide mo- 
notonous beach stretched its smooth 
lengths of fine sand. The sun was set- 
ting, the sea rising. Beneath the sunset-reddened 
sky lay the dark blue sea, upon which shone and 
wavered, here and there, like swarms of white 
stars, the snowy forms of the sea-mews. Flocks of 
sea-birds flying in the light, bathed their wings in 
the sunset gold. On top of the cliff, black cormo- 
rants, in calm attitudes of reflection, gazed fixedly 
out over the deep. 

Suddenly, blown along by the land-breeze, a 
curious object came rolling to my feet. It was a 
small circle of light wood, a bit of debris, no doubt, 
which the wind drove along and harried, as a 
child plays with a hoop. In its sidelong course, 
the diminutive toy with every turn came nearer 
to the sea, and presently a wave caught and car- 
ried it away. Behold it now passively floating, fol- 
lowing the movement of every eddy and every 
current; rising, ducking, vanishing, reappearing, 



66 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



sliding, dancing, hopping. The waves tossed it 
from one to the next. But now conies along a 
breaker, takes it upon its back, rolls with it to 
shore and casts it up on the sand. 

Hardly has it got there than a gust of wind, 
driving a shower of dead leaves, pounces upon it 
and whirls it along with a will. A mad race fol- 
lows, over the rippling sand, the scattered shells, 
the clumps of sea-weed and the thousand things 
the waves throw upon the shingle. 

At one moment, this Odyssey, winch I followed 
with increasing interest, seemed about to reach 
its end. The hoop got caught in the huge claw of 
a dead crab and stuck there. 

"At last," I thought, "it will get a little much- 
needed rest." But I was counting without the 
tide. . . . 

In a few instants, a great mass of water, a veri- 
table moving wall, broke with a crash against the 
shore: everything, sea-weed, crab, shells, disap- 
peared in a formidable seething. When calm was 
restored, I discerned the hoop, floating upon the 
water at a little distance, and as the shades of 
night were deepening and beginning to dim the 



AT MERCY OF WIND AND WAVE 67 



sky, the ocean, the shore . . . the frail ob- 
ject disappeared from my eyes. 

As I was turning from the spot, leaving upon 
the sand the track which every passing foot 
prints, and which the waves hasten to wash away, 
I thought of the restless course and warring des- 
tinies of some among us, of those whom the wave 
shakes and the storm flagellates, of all tormented 
and harassed lives, which escape from one calam- 
ity only to meet with another, until the last storm 
sweeps them away and drives them toward the 
boundless deep of eternity. 

I thought, too, of superficial lives, lives without 
guidance or consistency, of souls without inward 
anchor, open to the influence of the first-comer. 
Driven by their desires and passions, drawn by 
their interests, towed along by the will of others, 
agitated by threats or promises, they are in turn 
seized and relinquished by opposing forces. They 
do evil from others' suggestion, and good by 
chance, without being in themselves either evil or 
good. Their wandering aimless life, comparable, 
in its disorderly course, to the fate of my poor bit 
of waste stuff, tossed by the sea to the shore and 



68 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



returned by the wind to the sea, might with equal 
appropriateness bear as its motto: " At the mercy 
of wind and wave! " 

DOG-SHEARERS AND SCHOOL-MASTERS 

ON a Paris square, not far from the old 
palaces of our kings, stands, winter 
and summer, a stern-looking old fel- 
low with a long flowing beard. He is a dog-shearer, 
an important personage. He receives confidences 
and gives medical advice. I saw a lady the other 
day approach him with a timid air, such an air as 
mammas wear when they take their tender off- 
spring to the high and mighty head-master. She 
carried, under her wrap, a young dog on the 
subject of whom she wished to consult the old 
man. 

Without getting up or taking off his hat (cer- 
tain functions are incompatible with those ex- 
pressions of a shallow civility), the man declared, 
in brief harsh words, that the dog had no style. 
"These ears hang too low, that tail is too long. 
All this must be altered. " 



DOG-SHEARERS 



69 



The lady grew slightly paler, but mastered her 
emotion. 

She was trying to find something to say, but the 
man had already seized the dog, saying, "Leave 
it to me. You will see. It won't take long." Then, 
from his bag of tools he took two little iron rulers 
which he screwed on to the patient's ears. This 
done, he took a razor and neatly cut off all that 
projected beyond the line thus marked. Then he 
seized a pair of large shears and with a practised 
gesture docked the tail. 

The poor lady was nearer dead than alive; the 
dog, petrified with terror, did not even yelp. 
Whimpering, he shook his two poor red rem- 
nants of ears and his poor bleeding stump of a 
tail. As for the man, triumphant, but with un- 
diminished dignity, he said, " Now, madame, you 
may say you have a dog. Forty sous, please." 

Rather rough, I thought, but I have seen the 
same thing elsewhere. Is it not thus human edu- 
cation is sometimes carried on ? 

Behold a little initiative showing the tip of its 
ear ... a little originality, a longing to 
think freely or believe independently, to be some- 



70 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

body, in a word, not after the exact pattern of 
everybody. This is not to be tolerated. The indi- 
vidual must be brought to the regulation type. 
If he has it not by inheritance, it must be forcibly 
stamped upon him. Nature, no doubt, revolts, 
good sense utters its protest; but those convinced 
of the excellence of their methods are not held in 
check by such a small matter: "Leave it to me. 
It won't take long!" You give into their hands 
the rudiments of a man, they give you back a 
creature after the commonest pattern, docked of 
the most precious thing about him. The price is 
such and such. 

Give your forty sous without grumbling. One 
could not pay too much for such a fine piece of 
work. 

MR. CLOSE-FIST'S FIVE-FRANC PIECE 

THE sermon had come to its close. A 
special collection was to be taken up. 
The preacher had spoken of grave dis- 
tresses calling for relief, and, to the honour of Mr. 
Close-Fist be is said, the appeal had for once not 



MR. CLOSE-FIST 71 



left him indifferent. Generally, where collections 
were concerned, he mistrusted himself and pre- 
sented an impenetrable soul to anything that 
might be pleaded. He repulsed as the worst of 
tempters the man urging him to give. His ideas 
of human distress justified his action. Poverty to 
his thinking was either a well-deserved punish- 
ment or else a plain imposture. And that he 
might run no risk of violating his principles by 
yielding to an unreasoning impulse, he carefully 
emptied his pocket-book before going to church. 

He had this morning proceeded as usual, and he 
was now regretting it ; he was even on the point of 
borrowing money from one of his neighbours to 
put into the contribution-box. Mechanically he 
felt in his pockets and in his fob he found, much to 
his own surprise, a five-franc piece. Five-franc 
piece is, perhaps, not accurate, for the coin was 
dated 1853, and bore the effigy of a king of Sicily 
and Jerusalem, with the inscription: Ferdinandus 
II, Dei Gratia Rex. Every one knows that coins of 
the sort are only worth three francs seventy-five 
centimes, and that is why Mr. Close-Fist had ex- 
cluded that particular coin from his pocket-book, 



72 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



as one would exclude from the fold a mangy sheep. 
Having inadvertently taken it, he intended, un- 
obtrusively, to pass it on ; but vigilant cashiers had, 
so far, regularly, although with exquisite polite- 
ness, handed it back to him. "It was no doubt 
written, " thought he, " that this five-franc piece 
should serve to relieve some misfortune, " and he 
contemplated it in the hollow of his hand, waiting 
for the box to come his way. 

But the church was large and crowded, and Mr. 
Close-Fist had time to think. Across the close- 
packed ranks, money could be heard dropping into 
the contribution-box. Our friend's practised ear 
believed, from time to time, it distinguished the 
sound of a gold-piece. He silently rejoiced and 
said, looking at his five-franc piece : " Your turn 
soon, Ferdinandus Rex." 

Presently, however, he began to argue within 
himself : " The collection is apparently doing won- 
derfully well. Money is dropping like manna, like 
a very shower of gold. If I had with me a forty- 
sou piece, or even twenty sous, it would do per- 
fectly. ... " And he again looked at his old 
five-franc piece. No farther back than yesterday 



MR. CLOSE-FIST 



73 



he had hated that coin in which he had been de- 
ceived. " King Ferdinand, thou art no better than 
a foot-pad. Thou cheatest an honest merchant, 
father of a family, out of twenty-five sous!" But 
now, that king of rogues seemed to take on the air 
of a good prince. His face exhaled nobility and 
loyalty. Mr. Close-Fist felt that he had done him 
wrong and was inclined to beg his pardon. Three 
francs and seventy-five centimes! Was it right to 
throw away such a sum ? Would it not be a plain 
piece of folly, a sign of old age, softening of the 
brain, approaching death, perhaps ? At the 
thought his hand closed upon the coin. 

He continued to listen to the money dropping 
into the box; but the sound irritated him now. 
His thought had changed direction, and returned 
to its old groove. He reflected upon the possible 
abuse that would be made of all these gifts of char- 
ity. Who would get them? Sharpers, perhaps, 
loafers, pretended sufferers, who would secretly 
laugh at the dullness of their dupes. 

And the box was coming nearer and nearer, in a 
few seconds it would be there! . . . 

With a brisk movement, Mr. Close-Fist put the 



74 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



coin back into his pocket, and, out of regard for 
the opinion of others and in order not to seem 
odd, he dropped into the contribution-box an old 
brass button. 

On the evening of that day, near midnight, Mr. 
Close-Fist met on the top of the omnibus one of the 
men who, in the morning, had taken up the col- 
lection, and he asked for news of it. 

" Slim, " answered the other, " wretchedly slim : 
no gold, little silver, a lot of coppers, even a 
button. ..." 

" The public is certainly not generous, " said Mr. 
Close-Fist. 

At the same time he handed in the dark a coin to 
the conductor and said : " Two fares. . . . Out 
of five francs. " 

" Oh, Mr. Close-Fist, it is really too generous of 
you to pay my fare ! " spoke the neighbour. 

And when, his day's work over, the poor omni- 
bus conductor, with cold-stiffened fingers, counted 
his receipts, he discovered among them a silver 
coin, dated 1853, with the inscription: Ferdinan- 
dus II, Dei Gratia Rex Sic. et Hier. 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOOD 75 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOOD 

WHEN a practised huntsman walks 
across the fields, it not unfre- 
quently happens that he sees, hud- 
dled in the furrows, a hare or a partridge, where 
you, his friend, walking at his side, not being a 
huntsman, see nothing but brushwood. The painter 
likewise seizes lines, effects of light, groupings, 
which do not strike everybody; and the finished 
comedian, in chance conversations and scenes, 
discovers the extraordinary where you perceived 
only the commonplace. 

It was at sight of an apple dropping that New- 
ton saw solved in a flash the great problem of uni- 
versal gravitation. 

What does all this prove, unless it be that there 
are constantly under our eyes things which we 
have not the ability to see ? 

I apply this observation to our fashion of judg- 
ing men. Most of us are not skilled to see good. We 
must learn to search the brambles of evil to find 
the good hiding among them. 

In order to discover good, one must be desirous 



76 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



of finding it. Our interest generally does not lie in 
that direction. It wastes itself on other subjects. 
Men are animated by an unwholesome curiosity, 
are hungry for scandal, greedy for tales of crime 
or vice. It is no wonder they are finally abund- 
antly provided with disastrous information on the 
subject of humanity. And that provision becomes 
a burden to their memory and their heart, a drag 
upon their will. The spectacle of evil is discour- 
aging; it fosters pessimism, it is corrupting. Good, 
on the contrary, is food toward energy, and he who 
is able to discover it lives upon it. Every time you 
have been able to gather up a little of it from 
among the rubbish-heaps of evil encumbering the 
world, you have unsealed for yourself and others 
a spring of hope. But, even as in order to see 
clearly one must purify his eyes, one must, as a 
preparation for discerning good, purify his heart. 
The thief sees thieves everywhere. The impure 
sees nothing but impurity. The liar is surrounded 
by liars. The ill-tempered, quarrelsome man 
meets none but choleric men, and, in fact, were he 
to meet an angel, he could put him out of temper. 
But try to be honest, you will believe in hon- 



GRANDMOTHER'S CRUTCH 77 



esty; pure, and you will believe in purity; sincere, 
and you will no longer doubt the sincerity of 
others ; benevolent, and you will be amazed to dis- 
cover how many amiable people there are. All this 
is positive fact. Make the experiment, if you will 
not take my word for it, and you will soon be- 
come convinced that of all the journeys one can 
undertake upon earth, none is more interesting 
than the expedition on the discovery of good. 

GRANDMOTHER'S CRUTCH 

THROUGH the large old-fashioned win- 
dows with the small panes, a sunbeam 
falls into the room and seems to sleep on 
the floor. Grandmother is dozing, her arms resting 
upon the arms of her wide easy-chair. One won- 
ders which is whiter, her snowy hair, her sweet, 
pale face, or her wasted hands which have done so 
much work, and rocked so many little children. 

Baby, meanwhile, is having endless fun. He has 
taken possession of the crutch fallen from the 
sleeping grandmother's hands. Of the crutch he has 
made a horse, and what a horse! High-mettled, 



78 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



prancing, indomitable, the charger gallops around 
the room beneath the youthful horseman. What 
fun it is — nothing less than intoxication ! Look 
out, chairs ! Look out, earthen jug on the edge of 
the table ! 

The anxious cat, after various changes of ref- 
uge, has finally sought safety on the top of the 
clothes-press. From this elevated position, she con- 
templates the scene with comical dismay. . . . 
Baby knows nothing, unless it be that there are no 
bounds to his delight, and pursues his mad career, 
yelling : " Gee up ! Gee up ! " 

But now the noisy horseback ride has waked 
grandmama. She opens her eyes, and at the spec- 
tacle meeting them is aware of a peculiar impres- 
sion. That crutch, to which she had so slowly be- 
come resigned, the necessity to use which consti- 
tuted still such a heavy cross! She had always 
looked upon it as a necessary evil, one of those dis- 
pleasing objects one would dispense with all the 
more willingly that they have become indispensa- 
ble. Is it not, indeed, a reminder of her former 
strength, her years of labour and unimpaired capa- 
city, and her present infirmity ? x\nd, however much 



GRANDMOTHER'S CRUTCH 79 



we try not to murmur against the inevitable, it is 
a hard science, knowing how to grow old. 

Brave and wise though she were, there would 
come days when grandmother's life assumed to her 
the appearance of a sorrowful, unintelligible trial. 
She was baffled by the difficulties of her task, like a 
child learning to read, bewildered by the great, 
undecipherable words with which books seem to 
bristle. 

And behold, her ugly crutch clasped in the dimpled 
hands of her dear grandchild, caressed, carried in 
triumph, like the prettiest, most amusing of toys ! 
She felt that in that graceful picture of baby-life 
there might be concealed some mysterious benefi- 
cent intention, some message meant for her. Her 
thought, trying to fathom what lay before her eyes, 
was led upward to the holy will which orders our 
destinies, the wisdom which knows what man can- 
not know. She thought of Him who makes the 
young ivy to clasp the rough trunks of old oak- 
trees ; who, over crumbling walls, scatters profusion 
of wild roses, and, to brighten the evening of their 
lives, sends to aged grandmothers little laughing 
boys, that these may mingle their gold locks with 



80 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



the white ones, and with their fresh round cheeks 
kiss the furrowed, careworn foreheads. 

By this time, baby, tired out, was slackening 
speed. 

" Give me my crutch ! " said the grandmother. 

Baby replied: "I will give it to you, grandma, 
but you must promise to let me have it again when 
I need a horse. " 

And, for the first time, grandma smiled at her 
crutch. 



THERE IS A GOOD GOD FOR THE 
CHILDREN 

A CANAL-BOAT is moored not far from 
the Pont D'Austerlitz. Freshly painted 
and tarred, it offers the pleasing sight of 
its shining cleanliness. With its flowers at the stern, 
its windows polished bright, its irreproachable 
curtains, the diminutive dwelling of the barge- 
men attracts and cheers the eye. 

It is not that, however, which for the last few 
moments has been holding breathless a whole 
gallery of spectators leaning against the parapet of 



THERE IS A GOOD GOD 81 



the wharf. A tiny boy, escaped none knows how 
from the watchful maternal eye, is creeping on all 
fours along the deck of the boat. When I say creep- 
ing, I am not wholly accurate. Baby is exerting 
himself to the utmost, throwing himself from one 
side to the other with amazing briskness ; one might 
almost call it galloping. Again and again he just 
misses falling into the water. A shudder runs 
through the spectators, who, unable to board the 
boat for lack of a gang-plank, scream to attract 
attention. But no one hears them. And baby con- 
tinues his course, now shaving the edge-line, now 
taking himself nearer to the middle of the deck. 

Now he pauses, just long enough to allow the 
public a good look at him. Really, it would be a 
pity that anything should happen to that child. A 
sturdy little fellow, as the audience may judge, for, 
the weather being hot, he has nothing on but the 
briefest of little shirts. 

This inextensive garment, furthermore, is split 
at the back, from top to bottom. One might sup- 
pose it meant for a bib. The tying-string con- 
necting the two sides is buried at the neck in a 
fold of flesh. The arms, at the moment in use for 



82 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



purposes of locomotion, uphold the chest, like two 
little twisted columns. As for the legs, which the 
sun is caressing and bronzing, they are wee mas- 
terpieces in the dumpy style. 

But now he resumes his antics. He leaps and 
rears like a rabbit. He amuses himself fingering 
everything he comes into collision with, overleaps 
the sail-yard lying on the deck, tries to stand up 
against the mast, but tumbles down, and does not 
care a button; turns around the vinegar keg, 
climbs into the centre of a great coiled hawser and 
sits there like a bird in his nest ; seizes his foot in his 
hand and looks it over, like a curiosity. All this in 
less time than it takes to tell it. Alas! after these 
harmless recreations, he returns to more dan- 
gerous ones, to the terror and dismay of the gal- 
lery. Not only does he go near the edge, but he 
bends over it to see the water run. A breath, a 
nothing, would suffice to throw him off his bal- 
ance. The anguish of the passers is at its height; 
children stamp their feet and weep, ladies cover 
their eyes and cry: " God help us, he will fall!" 
It is enough to make your hair stand on end. 
As for Baby, the villain laughs ! 



THE CORK 



83 



At this point a head is thrust out from the little 
stairway leading to the bargeman's cabin. It is the 
mother, who has just discovered her son's absence. 
She sees at a glance how matters stand and grows 
visibly paler. But, without a cry, without a word, 
she steals along the deck, comes up behind the 
child in jeopardy, and clutches him by the leg! A 
long sigh of relief escapes from the crowd, who 
scatter saying: "There is a good God for the 
children. " 

The mother probably thinks the same, but in 
order not to encourage her darling in his pranks, 
she administers a swift little series of smacks, not 
very severe, with the explanatory remark: "That's 
to teach you better!" 

THE CORK 

FRESH and limpid between the bulrushes 
and beneath the spreading alder-trees, 
ripples along the little brook, carrying 
with it in its capricious course a cork. 

The voyage is not unad venturous. Here, reeds 
block the way; further, there are rapids to shoot. 



84 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



But the cork triumphs over all obstacles, and goes 
its unconcerned way, serving as a wherry in turn 
for gilded dragon-flies, busy bees, and fickle 
butterflies. 

Now it approaches a mill; it slackens speed. 
Soon, it stops completely still. Near the closed 
flood-gate, wisps of straw, dead leaves, form a 
motley mat. There is nothing for the cork but to 
add itself to these. That is what it does. Slowly, 
very slowly, the hours wear themselves away. 

Finally, a chain creaks, the flood-gate opens. 
Drawn into the narrow channel, the water with all 
it carries rushes tumultuously against the great 
wheel. The cork disappears in the froth of boiling 
waves. But it comes safely through the pass, and 
goes floating down the stream. Soon the rough tor- 
rent smooths itself out, the foam disappears, and 
navigation, between lovely green pastures, be- 
comes easy and pleasant. 

But lo, a vicissitude of quite an unexpected 
sort! At a certain spot, the bank, undermined by 
the waves, has crumbled till it is nearly flat. There 
the brook, abruptly broadening, spreads out over a 
more spacious bed. It might be mistaken for a 



THE CORK 85 

small lake. The boys call it the great bath-tub, and 
at this very moment half a dozen are splashing in 
the water. No sooner does the cork appear than it 
is greeted with a unanimous cry: the whole band 
springs to seize it. 

A contest begins, the stake of which is the cork. 
Conquered and conquered back, it passes from 
hand to hand, and the broken surface of the water 
is witness of wild struggles, and frantic vocifera- 
tion. The conflict finally ceases and a game is orga- 
nized, the point of which is to make the cork sink. 
The boys get sticks and, in turn, apply formidable 
blows to the cork. At every blow the cork goes 
under and disappears, reappearing a little way off. 
Then the boys assail it with stones. The strong- 
est pick up veritable boulders, lift them with strain- 
ing sinews, and drop them heavily upon the cork. 
"Now it will stay down!" they say. Beneath the 
showering stones, the water loses its purity, the 
bath-tub becomes a quagmire; the grass and the 
flowers upon the charming bank are trampled 
underfoot by the breathless boys, worn out with 
their play. But the cork, beaten under again and 
again, comes to the surface every time. At last, 



86 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



the young madcaps give it up and go home. 
Whereupon it pursues its way in the evening 
light, toward the silver streams, toward the 
golden rivers, toward the boundless ocean, often 
hindered, never stopped. 

Is not this little cork the symbol of many 
things, feeble and fragile in appearance, but, 
in very fact, invincible ? 

THE SHELL 

IS anything more delicious than to walk along 
the damp beach, with naked feet upon the 
firm sand ? The sea sings you its mighty 
song, the sea-wind fills your lungs. The hours fly 
past, fight as swallows, leaving no track of their 
flight. When tired of walking, you sit down upon 
some rock left bare by the ebb-tide and you watch 
what is going on in the pools of water caught, as in 
deep cups, in the hollows of the rock. In the bottom 
of the limpid aquarium you see every shape and 
every colour of sea-weed. There are ribbons, leaves, 
mosses, filmy vegetations, among which circulate 
fishes, stealthy prawns, sidling crabs, innumerable 



THE SHELL 



8? 



shell-fish. How many marvels collected in a few 
drops of water, and how soothing to the mind to 
bend over these miniature lakes of which each en- 
closes a world ! One sometimes makes singular dis- 
coveries there, as you shall hear. 

I had for some moments been watching a 
strange object moving hither and thither, without 
being able to determine its nature. It was many 
shaped, many coloured, looking like no known 
thing; but it moved and appeared to be alive. 
Puzzled, I plunged my arm into the pool and drew 
out the phenomenon. It was not a single animal, it 
was a colony, and of the most grotesque. In the 
centre was a shell, the old shell of a sea-snail of the 
sort named cuckoo. The rightful original tenant 
had long ceased to be. In his place lodged a curious 
creature, armed with great claws which he could 
draw in or thrust out at will, a most queer little 
body, vulgarly named Peter Hermit. On the back 
of the shell stuck two sea anemones, interesting 
molluscs possessing the faculty of unfolding like a 
flower, and closing like a bud. The space available 
near them was filled by a cluster of infinitesimal 
oysters and a nearly microscopic assemblage of 



88 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



mussels. When the whole was in the water, the 
principal lodger, Peter Hermit, endowed with 
prodigious strength for his size, dragged about, by 
his unassisted effort, the shell, anemones, oysters, 
and mussels, creatures ordinarily motionless, but 
condemned by the will of this active crustacean to 
perpetual motion. 

It was certainly comical and amusing to see this 
indescribable crew jogging about ! While yielding 
to the innocent charm of this absolutely novel 
spectacle, I said to myself: "Wherever have I 
seen something of the sort ? " 

It was not difficult to remember, A similar phe- 
nomenon — indeed, strikingly similar — may be 
seen in the history of human institutions. Let 
them endure long enough, and have a sufficiently 
resisting form, the spirit which originally framed 
them at last dies out of them. Nothing remains but 
the shell. As it is a comfortable shell and a safe 
shelter, some new-comer soon takes possession of 
it. After a time, he feels so much at home in it that 
he fancies he has always been there. Near him, 
upon him, come others and fasten themselves. All 
these are grafted upon the same centre and the 



THE SHELL 



89 



same movement carries them along; but what an 
agglomeration of incompatible things, condemned 
to live together, — above all, how different from 
what lived there first! 

Take, for instance, a charitable institution, 
originally founded by a disinterested man. The 
man dies, his institution survives him. Little by 
little, however, a different spirit informs it. The 
house is a good one. A director takes up his com- 
fortable quarters in it, with several subordinates, 
a numerous attendance. Upon all these mercenary 
existences, abuses graft themselves and multiply. 
Finally, the greater part of the funds is absorbed 
by the functionaries, and the institution, created 
to relieve human suffering, serves principally to 
furnish a few shrewd personages with comfortable 
sinecures. 

Religious and political circles, official life in all 
countries, could furnish us with numerous ex- 
amples in illustration of our comparison. How 
often are institutions boasting their antiquity, and 
pleading in their justification the spirit which gave 
them birth, nothing more than an agglomeration of 
abuses, an incredible and conflicting mixture of 



90 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



practices which no longer bear any relation to the 
purpose of the founder. 

Which does not prevent such small monstros- 
ities as Peter Hermit from being diverting little 
creatures, and for nothing in the world would I 
wish to cast discredit upon their peaceful existences. 

THE EYES WHICH SEE NOT: THE 
EARS WHICH HEAR NOT 




HE foregoing words rang in my mem- 
ory this morning, in particular circum- 
stances which I will describe: 



At the further end of the vast court, surrounded 
by stables, encumbered with the possessions of 
the Omnibus Company, above a shed where the 
livelong day horses are shod, lives the black- 
smith's little family. 

While the man is hammering iron, below, this 
wife, above, is dying of consumption. Poor wo- 
man! As I enter her room, the most touching 
spectacle meets my eyes. Very pale in her bed, 
the sick woman is trying to repress her suffocat- 
ing cough, whilst, near the window, three little 



EYES WHICH SEE NOT 91 



girls are playing in the sunshine. Bare-footed, 
with tangled golden locks, they have the unmis- 
takable look of neglect of children deprived of a 
mother's care; but their high spirits bear witness 
to their flourishing health; their cheeks show 
plainly that they do not suffer for want of food. 

In the middle of the room sits a neighbour, bath- 
ing a little boy. He is the blacksmith's fourth 
child. He is six weeks old; his birth sealed his 
mother's doom. As for the child, he looks like a 
sturdy little fellow; the vitality expressed in his 
movements, his firm flesh, his lusty cry, would 
never allow one to suppose he had been born of a 
dying woman. 

Thus is enacted in that chamber one of life's 
tragedies. A woman, young, longing to live, feels 
herself slowly sapped by disease. To-morrow, per- 
haps, death will have done its work. The poor 
creature meanwhile looks at her precious brood 
and asks herself : " What will become of them ? " 
And the children see nothing of this anguish; the 
horrible cough does not interrupt their play; the 
angel of death drawing near to that bed of pain is 
invisible to their eyes. If they had the least sus- 



92 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



picion! If the horror of that situation were not 
concealed from them, how could they endure it ? 
There would be for them nothing but tears, 
mourning, a life blighted at its dawn by care. No 
doubt it is heart-rending to see that care-free 
childhood by the side of that consumptive fully 
conscious of her condition. And yet is it not bet- 
ter that certain things should be kept from the 
little ones, that certain sorrows should remain 
unsuspected by them, that their young shoulders 
should be spared too heavy burdens ? Is it not an 
effect of mercy, of clemency, that their ears do 
not hear, and that their eyes do not see ? 



IN CONNECTION WITH TOBACCO 

I AM not going to speak of nicotine, or the 
society against the abuse of tobacco. This 
is a different matter, as you shall see. But 
it is in a fashion concerned with tobacco. Let me 
hasten to explain. 

It was toward the middle of September, on the 
banks of the Dordogne. The harvest had been 
gathered in, the grapes were fast growing ripe. 



IN CONNECTION WITH TOBACCO 93 

Here and there, among the vines burdened with 
their heavy black clusters, lay fields of tobacco 
with luxuriant leaves. The tobacco-plants, well 
apart from one another and scrupulously a-row, 
stretched long regular lines far into the distance. 
They conjured up dreams of fragrant golden 
cigars, of winter evenings spent beside the fire, 
watching the smoke curl upward, and talking 
with friends. 

Near one of these tobacco-fields was a peasant 
apparently absorbed in his work. But he was a 
good-natured sort of fellow, and willingly gave 
me a few explanations which I desired of him, 
without any effect of regarding me as a loafer, 
although for the moment I was idling and he was 
hard at work. 

He spoke to me of taxes, methods of manu- 
facturing, indirect contributions, and many other 
things unrelated with the first, as happens when 
one is chatting. Before leaving him, I asked : 

"How does it happen, Monsieur, that the to- 
bacco grown in gardens never has as handsome 
leaves as this ? " 

" Ah," said he, " the reason is that in gardens it 



94 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



is allowed to grow freely. It shoots up a tall stalk 
and the leaves remain comparatively small. We, 
on the contrary, we extirpate the heart of the 
plant, we prevent its growing upward; the sap 
then turns back into the leaves and these become 
magnificent." 

Upon this explanation, we separated. But, as I 
proceeded with my country stroll, the peasant's 
last words rang persistently in my ear: "We ex- 
tirpate its heart — and the leaves become mag- 
nificent!" Extirpation of the heart ! Strange con- 
junction of words! From one stepping-stone of 
thought to the other, I was led to the considera- 
tion of the men who succeed in the world because 
they have practised upon themselves the extirpa- 
tion of the heart. The heart is in many circum- 
stances a troublesome member. Those who have 
too much of it are hampered by sentiments, 
scruples, regard for their neighbour. The latter 
troublesome companion at every point hinders 
their progress. They grow perhaps in height, in 
nobility, in inward worth. But what of that ? Is it 
of any use in this world ? In order to succeed, to 
feather his nest, to push himself forward, one 



LESSON OF THE GRASSHOPPERS 95 



must courageously practise upon himself the 
operation which the peasants practise upon the 
tobacco-plant. That done, all goes capitally — 
the leaves become magnificent. 

Only, when a man has reached that point, is he 
still worth the cigar he smokes ? 

THE LESSON OF THE GRASSHOPPERS 

I WAS descending Bella-Tolla, a mountain 
in the Upper Valais, whose summit, three 
thousand feet above sea-level, is interest- 
ing by reason of the marvellous view it affords 
over the glaciers. After the absolute silence of the 
mountain tops, where nothing either stirs or 
sounds, I was coming once more into the pasture 
region, filled with the tinkling of sheep-bells and 
the incessant rush of torrents. The heat of the 
August sun, the beauty of the spot, the regret at 
being with every step further removed from the 
splendours contemplated up yonder, all invited 
me to a halt. It could not be a halt in the shade, 
for hardly were the dark tops of the ancient pine- 
trees in sight, far below. I therefore lay down in 



96 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



full noon sunlight, upon that fine rough grass 
which reminds one of a bear-skin. 

Even though bathed in canicular beams, one 
never finds the heat oppressive upon the moun- 
tains, in that vivifying air, tempered by the 
neighbourhood of the eternal snows. At first, I 
had no eyes save for the blue vault and the 
equally stainless white peaks. Arrayed in a gigan- 
tic circle, the Alps seemed to be meditating under 
the sky, like an assemblage of white heads of 
thinkers, bowed for centuries over the problems 
of the world. 

But after a time, I left gazing upon that uplift- 
ing spectacle to take account of what was going 
on close beside me in the grass. A swarm of grass- 
hoppers was noisily expressing its joy in life. They 
kept up in the warm light a deafening buzz of 
wings, a dazzling, indefatigable come-and-go. 

The mass of them glittered, hopped, flew, 
crackled. But what struck me most was the lively 
passions apparently agitating these tiny beings. 
Certain among them, males without the least 
doubt, put on a swashbuckler air, evidently to 
impress their rivals. They puffed out their chests 



LESSON OF THE GRASSHOPPERS 97 



in their shining emerald corslets, no otherwise 
than knights in steel armour. They dragged their 
formidable hind-legs, as certain cavalry officers 
drag their long sabres across the flags of city 
squares. They pointed their antennae with a vast 
assumption of importance, and when they came 
face to face with the like of themselves, they 
stopped short, and the two looked each other over 
with an indescribable effect of defiance and con- 
tempt. I said to myself with a smile: "In what 
cracks and crannies cannot pride find room ! " 

All this for a whole hour afforded me extraor- 
dinary amusement, not without reminding me of 
what takes place at the foot of the mountains, on 
the plains and in the cities, in the bosom of hu- 
man society. Those ephemeral insects, so absorbed 
in their tiny affairs, so full of their minute per- 
sonalities in the presence of the colossal, endlessly 
enduring Alps, are a fit image of men, busy with 
their shallow trifles in the midst of the greatest 
mysteries and gravest problems. When, detached 
from the whole matter, stretched upon the grass 
in an hour of calm, we watch the confused ado of 
the insects in a patch of sunshine, we find it ridic- 



98 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



ulous that little creatures whom the first touch of 
frost will lay side by side in the same dust should 
comport themselves with so much vanity. A little 
later, having returned between the social grooves, 
in the daily conflict of passions and self-love we 
forthwith imitate them, and are ourselves with- 
out knowing it those self-pleased grasshoppers 
who assume a front intended to dazzle others. 
And we are twice to blame : first, for having smiled 
at those poor creatures, and then for imitating 
them. They are after all in the order of things. 
They have been given one morning in which to 
shine, without taking thought for anything else. 
Neither the sky above them, nor the mountains, 
nor their own lives, give them any hint of inward 
significance. But man is not in the order, when he 
lives as they live. And when he forgets the great- 
ness of things and his own littleness to the point 
of indulging in complacency and pride, of admir- 
ing himself and despising others, he does not 
know how ridiculous he is. In what cracks and 
crannies, indeed, may one say, cannot pride find 
room ? 



MAN OR DUMMY 99 



MAN OR DUMMY 

FROM the hill where I am sitting, I have 
a bird's eye view of the vast court of the 
barracks. For the last quarter of an hour 
I have been watching a spectacle which greatly 
puzzles me. In the centre of the court, motionless on 
his horse, stands a horseman. The only thing I can 
distinguish about him from this distance is a splen- 
did plume. From it I conclude that he is a general. 

But why does he not move? Why do the sol- 
diers passing through the court take no notice of 
him whatever ? Not one of them salutes. In wooden 
clogs and buckram jackets, with their caps on one 
side and their pipes in their mouths, they come and 
go in all directions. One of them dances with his 
stable-broom, others are having a boxing-match, 
still others playing leap-frog and devoting them- 
selves to every description of joyful eccentricity. As 
for the general, calm as bronze, he seems to regard 
their pranks and even their disrespectful gestures 
with a paternal eye. A queer general, in truth. 

But the scene changes: From a side door, a 
troop of horse makes irruption into the court, and 

LOFC. 



100 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



orders itself a-row in front of the plumed indivi- 
dual. As soon as the men are in line, they draw 
their sabres. A horseman leaves the squad, and, 
with outstretched arm, his sabre glittering in the 
sun, charges the general; after him, a second, a 
third, and so forth. At a gallop, all the horsemen 
in turn attack him, raising so much dust that I 
can no longer distinguish anything at all. When 
the cloud disperses, I see my general again. He 
has not moved. But, with the assistance of a field- 
glass, I can discern gaping holes all over his body, 
and tufts of straw escaping through his torn 
clothes. All is then explained: I have been look- 
ing at the exercise of the dummy, and my sup- 
posed general is nothing but a man of straw. 

You are wondering why I tell you this story ? I 
will make no mystery of my intention. I will tell 
you freely. 

There is in the world a quantity of people who 
appear to be men, they sometimes even wear 
plumes. In reality they are dummies. I am think- 
ing particularly of those whose great strength 
consists in apathy. They are always at the same 
temperature, wear the same countenance, look at 



MAN OR DUMMY 101 



everything with the same imperturbability. Seen 
from the outside and from a little distance, they 
are characters, tranquil and courageous stoics, or 
yet gentle disciples of Christ. 

Baseness does not disgust them, lies do not 
trouble them, cowardice does not revolt them. 
But look a little closer, you will be undeceived. 
By a gross error you have taken for elevation of 
soul or for benignity what is mere impotence. The 
apparent firmness of those persons conceals a 
profound moral disease, and their inward noth- 
ingness is translated by a complete incapacity for 
emotion, passion, indignation. 

When you heat water, it boils. Try to prevent 
it, the vapour in process of formation will concen- 
trate in an effort so colossal that it will burst what- 
ever is restraining it. And if you commit before a 
living man certain injustices, certain cruelties, cer- 
tain base or mean actions, he grows hot, he boils 
over. Try to prevent him, his power of resistance 
will be augmented by the whole weight of your 
compression; and suddenly, under the mighty 
action of the interior fire, he will shatter every 
obstacle. 



102 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



Water incapable of boiling would not be water. 
A man incapable of indignation is not a man. 
Are you a man ? Have you bowels, blood, a heart ? 
No need to answer, events will tell. I lie in wait 
for you in the presence of certain manifestations of 
evil. If you are not moved, if you do not run to 
take arms, transported with indignation, forced 
to say: "It is more than I can stand!" you are 
judged. Though you should wear the mask of a 
lion, you are stuffed with straw. 

Is it necessary to add that the spirit we refer to 
has no relation with the spirit of vengeance, of 
violence or fanaticism ? That spirit is always harm- 
ful, for it proceeds from a bitter source, and is 
fed by the impure fire of our most detestable pas- 
sions. Just indignation, on the contrary, has its 
origin in love. Saint Paul said : " Hate evil ! " And 
indeed it is impossible to love men without at the 
same time hating the great murderer, sin, in all its 
forms, and proving that hatred by actions. Let us 
not fear we shall run into difficulties with the 
Gospel by yielding to just indignation; there is 
nothing in common between Christianity and 
apathetic good-nature. We forget too often how 



THE PASSING STRANGERS 103 



much generous combativity is in keeping with 
charity. To rise up in revolt, to protest, to fight, 
are so many ways of showing love. To be careful 
of your neighbour's feelings, when his state de- 
mands that he should be seized, shaken, torn 
from the gravest dangers, is to lack charity. No 
doubt, heroic measures are reserved for extreme 
cases; but there are circumstances in which they 
become a duty. There are hours when the only 
hope of opening the eyes of misguided men, is to 
rise up against them with such violence that they 
can measure the unworthiness of their conduct by 
the horror it inspires. One can say in any case 
without fear of error: The direct blow which 
wakes up conscience, is better than the caress 
which lulls it to sleep. 



THE PASSING STRANGERS 

WEDNESDAY last, a bitterly cold 
day, I was walking along the 
Boulevard de l'Hopital. The bare 
tree-boughs stood out in sharp relief against the 
clear sky, where, in spite of the early hour — it 



104 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



was three o'clock — the sun was already taking 
on the red tints of sunset. At the steepest point of 
the Boulevard, I saw two vehicles painfully toil- 
ing up the rise; they were families of outside folk, 
coming no doubt to take up winter quarters in 
some empty lot near the Barriere d'ltalie. The 
first cart, the handsomer of the two, ancient but 
coquettish with its green blinds, was mounted 
upon such shaky wheels that at every turn I 
looked for a catastrophe. It was drawn by a one- 
eyed, yellow horse with white spots. Two leather 
knee-caps proclaimed a propensity to stumble — 
and a careful master. Alongside the horse went a 
very nimble little black donkey. He wore, as did 
his companion, a bunch of green and red feathers 
on the top of his head. Both were doing their best, 
the horse with long steps, the donkey with very 
short ones. The gait of the two comrades, in their 
worn harness, was far from being well-matched, 
and the donkey, who strained to keep neck to 
neck, recalled the words of Virgil: " Sequitur 
. . . non passibus aequis." On the left, hold- 
ing the horse by the bridle, walked the man; on 
the right, encouraging the donkey, walked the 



THE PASSING STRANGERS 105 

woman. They spoke to their animals as one does 
to friends whom one is helping along, without 
vociferation, without blows. 

Behind this carriage, and quite close to it, 
climbed another, little better than a hand-cart. 
The team in this case was composed of three: a 
woman, who held the shaft, and wore upon her 
hands, to protect them from the cold, a pair of 
much-mended socks; a dog who, with a rope at 
his neck, his tongue hanging down to the ground, 
tugged under the cart; and finally a man, with a 
wooden leg, pushing and stumping along behind. 

It was certainly a curious spectacle. All along 
the way the passers stopped to watch it. As for 
me, walking like them in the direction of the 
Barriere dTtalie, where the painful ascent would 
end, I could not take my eyes off them. From the 
sidewalk up which I was slowly climbing, I could 
see the good people and the brave beasts make a 
bit of headway, stop to get breath, and start again 
with renewed energy. From time to time, when 
the second cart fell too far behind, the first would 
halt, wait for it and tow it for a few steps. 

Having reached the top of the rise, I turned 



106 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



into a side street. But the memory of what I had 
seen haunted me, like something extraordinary 
and touching. I had there seen creatures, so dif- 
ferent one from the other, collaborating with per- 
fect benevolence. I had seen at work, in a setting 
of the humblest, courage, good-will, mutual help- 
fulness. Thanks to these virtues, a horse, a don- 
key and a dog, a cripple and women, had suc- 
ceeded in getting to the top of the hill in spite of 
wobbling wheels and rough cobbles. 

What a lesson of high morality and high poli- 
tics! Those associated in work requiring the 
strength of many and the concurrence of mani- 
fold and various wills, might derive valuable sug- 
gestions from it. I recommend it as a subject for 
meditation to Church members. Accustomed to 
glorifying the patience of saints and the magna- 
nimity of illustrious believers, they cannot refuse 
the tribute of their approval to obscure prac- 
tices of those rare virtues, and perhaps, after 
having seen my good people and my brave beasts, 
they will be more merciful to collaborators think- 
ing differently from themselves in matters of de- 
tail. Since the road is hard and our tools are weak, 



THE ROOFER'S ROPE 107 



let us at least work in harmony. Let the horse and 
the ass, the man with two legs and the man with 
but one, unite their efforts. 

Let us despise no aid. Whoever helps to push 
is in the right; they only are dangerous who 
thrust sticks between the wheel-spokes. 

THE ROOFER'S ROPE 

THE steeple rears its slender height, sun- 
gilded, in the morning sky. A black and 
white swarm of swallows flutters around 
it, and through the glad cries with which they fill 
the air a human voice may be distinguished, com- 
ing none knows whence. The voice is singing in 
clear resonant tones, to the accompaniment of 
brisk hammer-taps. 

It is the voice of the roofer, suspended between 
heaven and earth, up yonder, a few yards from 
the cross. Mere looking at him occasions a shud- 
der. One thinks of the yawning gulf below him, 
of all those stagings of columns and vaults; one 
thinks of the possibility of an accident — the hor- 
rible breaking of bones attending the fall of a body, 



108 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



dropping from cornice to cornice, striking against 
the angles, the gargoyles, and finally flattening 
itself upon the stones of the street. It makes one 
dizzy and recalls the sensations of nightmare 
dreams, during which one clings to the eaves of 
some immeasurably high edifice, mad with terror, 
about to drop into the void below. . . . 

The roofer seems free from all such thoughts. 
He proceeds untroubled with his work. The old 
stone saints, who allow the sparrows to nest in 
their beards and their sleeves, are not calmer on 
their pedestals than that man on his roof. 

Whence does he derive that sense of security ? 
Clearly, from confidence. His life, no doubt, hangs 
upon a rope, but he knows that rope and counts 
upon it as you count upon the solidity of the earth. 
He neither doubts nor trembles. He knows that 
when noon strikes at the church-clock, he will let 
himself down from knot to knot, will climb into 
the belfry, descend the innumerable stairs and go 
home to his wife and children for dinner. 

That faithful rope suggests many reflections. If 
we could trust the word of our fellow-men as the 
roofer trusts his rope ! 



THE ROOFER'S ROPE 109 



The truth is that the life of each one of us 
depends, in large measure, upon the faithfulness 
of others. For how many beings does existence, as 
it were, hang upon a promise made them : Let the 
promise hold good and they are happy, secure. 
But let the promise, like a rotten rope, part asun- 
der, and behold them plunged lip-deep in sorrow. 

Shall a man's word be less staunch than the 
flax of a rope? It should not be; it unfortunately 
is. 

" I love you; I shall love you always, your life is 
my life; I bind myself to you this day by a sacred 
promise, and never shall my destiny by my will 
be severed from yours ! " A man makes this prom- 
ise to a woman, and trusting his word she places 
her future in his hands. A life, and, through that 
life, several lives more, perhaps, the lives of in- 
nocent children, are suspended upon a word. 

But days pass, events change, the man changes 
with them. As rain, frost, heat, acting in turn 
upon the rope wear and corrode it, finally alter- 
ing its very fibre, all sorts of causes act upon the 
man's will and weaken it; and one fine day the 
rope breaks. 



110 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



There are in the world too many men who 
fashion their ropes out of damaged flax, or who 
allow them to deteriorate for lack of care. They 
are incapable of keeping in rainy weather a prom- 
ise made when the sun was bright. In commerce, 
finance, friendship, love, politics, religion, there 
are too many unreliable ropes. 

You say : e< Who can be trusted ? One is no 
longer sure of anybody!" 

But, you who are speaking, can one rely upon 
you? 

If you ask for a remedy to this evil, I will point 
one out with all my heart. It is condensed in the 
words: Be staunch! 

You will perhaps reply: "What is the use of 
one good rope among so many bad ones, of one 
solid man among so many hypocrites ? " But I 
shall answer: "It is precisely because every one 
argues after that fashion that everything cracks 
and breaks beneath our feet, and that confidence, 
that basis of social life, is shaken. Be staunch, I 
tell you, be a man; have but one word, and long 
live the roofer's rope!" 



PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 111 



PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 
Dedicated to the Young 

I HAD not seen her in twenty years. Already 
bent and wrinkled at our last meeting, how 
old she must be now, sapped by illness and 
the hard trials of her latter years ! . . . 

I walked up the shady avenues of the Asylum 
for the Aged, where she is ending her life, and 
soon found myself upon the threshold of her little 
room. Imagine a coquettishly simple little nest: 
snowy muslins, furniture faultlessly neat in line 
and surface; a few fresh flowers: the bower of a 
young girl, save for a few very old portraits and 
ornaments, most dearly cherished, as might be 
divined merely by looking at them. In the midst 
of all this a great invalid's-chair, forming a back- 
ground to a very pale face in a very white cap. 

We talked a long time — deliciously. Why did 
she speak so little of herself, her solitude, her long 
sufferings ? I ought to have engaged her to do 
this, to have insisted upon it. But, as it seems to 
me now, I did attempt it repeatedly, and after 



112 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



a few bare details she turned the conversation, 
inquiring about everything, interested in the life 
and trials of each, in the studies and prospects of 
the young people, the health of the little ones. 
Nothing is to her a matter of indifference. And 
yet she has no regrets for the life in which she 
takes so profound an interest, and the discreet 
allusion to her approaching death was spoken by 
lips that at the same time smiled. 

Since I left her, I can think of nothing else. 
My heart has remained a captive down yonder, 
where, among the shadows of the softly waving 
leaves, a sunbeam plays upon the face of an octo- 
genarian. 

Why am I thus fascinated ? What intimation of 
mysterious greatness did I receive from that 
fragile detached existence? 

I have a dim perception of it, without as yet 
the ability to measure the extent of what I feel. 
That aged woman was to me a revelation of 
power. I had glimpses in her of the secret of true 
life, and true youth, which consists in turning 
from oneself to find in love an ampler life. Rare 
apparitions, whose serenity of soul sheds light 



PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 113 

upon all ordeals, whose kindness toward others 
has steadily increased in spite of all burdens. 
Such impersonal old age as theirs is the sweetest, 
most irresistible power in the world. God speaks 
to us through them, and I do not believe youth 
can receive from any quarter a more important 
revelation than theirs. 

Young reader, by chance taking up this little 
book and reading this page, if you wish to under- 
stand the grace accorded you in youth and life, 
you must before anything else become sensible of 
that interior beauty, so sublime that I despair of 
being able to describe it. 

Youth is like every other sort of inheritance or 
gift. In order really to possess it, one must con- 
quer it. If you have, to constitute you young, 
nothing but the fact of your twenty years, I tell 
you that basis of youth is a wretched one. Infal- 
libly you would be led to misuse, misunderstand- 
ing them, the treasures of life that are in you. 
You would be finally left with nothing but use- 
less regrets. Life is a divine school where immortal 
truths present themselves to us to be known un- 
der transitory forms. We come to consciousness 



114 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



of the eternal through the ephemeral. Youth, with 
its grace, its abundant vitality, its generous im- 
pulses — physical youth, should be a stimulus 
toward the great life which, by the will which 
created us, is our high final destiny. Youth is a 
marvellous book the sense of which we must has- 
ten to decipher and learn. I say hasten, for the 
pages turn quickly, and he who does not gather 
in their fragrance has lived in vain. 

After that splendid superabundance of strength 
and ardour, the hour comes in which the vigour of 
outward life decreases. One by one, the elements 
composing it are withdrawn. Their object was to 
help in the erection of the inner life. Their time is 
now past, their work done. Let them go! Woe 
unto him, in that hour, who has clung to the form 
and not discovered the sense of the book of life. 
His youth will have been to him no more than a 
brilliant rocket which dispels the night for a mo- 
ment only to make it appear more unfathomable 
and black. The old age of the egotist and the 
worldly is a foundering of the ship. The world is 
full of disenchanted, disillusioned old men, without 
interest in anything, unless it be that poor remnant 



PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 115 



of material life, frail worn shred, by which the 
affrighted wretches are suspended above the gulf. 
For youth which builds upon flesh alone, what a 
dreadful object-lesson is such old age as theirs! 

But he who in living has chiefly been observant 
of the inner side of life, its soul, and has learned 
to live in the deep realities, discovers as he grows 
old a new horizon. Not having centred his life in 
the enjoyment of material welfare, he does not 
perish with that welfare. That which happens to 
him is akin to that which happens to the bird, 
mature for hatching, when the shell cracks. He is 
born into a superior life, a winged life. Undis- 
mayed he sees the shapes broken which served to 
protect his beginnings. 

That is what I saw the other day on the face 
and in the heart of an old woman, and more and 
more decidedly I said to myself : The truest, most 
admirable youth, the youth whose bloom out- 
rivals the freshness of roses, is youth beneath 
white hair. Its smile is purer — above all, it is 
more stable, than the smile which brightens your 
beautiful eyes at twenty. For it floats upon eyes 
dimmed by tears, and persists among the nail- 



116 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



prints of sorrow. It no longer depends upon sun- 
shine; it is kindled at the source of immortal 
light. 

That is why, if you love life and youth, you 
must devoutly watch beautiful old age, which 
possesses the great secret of living well. Seek it 
out, as Diogenes went seeking a man, and, if you 
are so fortunate as to meet it, take all the enthu- 
siasm, all the veneration, all the love of which 
your heart is capable, and lay them at its feet in 
pure homage. When that is done, your youth will 
seem to you more beautiful than before, and you 
will no longer fear its waning, for you will have 
learned to love it in its immortal part. 



A PROVERB AT FAULT 

EVERY one is familiar with the adage: 
Divide to reign. It expresses an incon- 
testable truth. But there is no medal 
without its underside and no infallible proverb. 
A certain old woman of my acquaintance affords 
a proof of this, for it was not by dividing, it was 
by uniting that she succeeded in reigning. 



A PROVERB AT FAULT 117 



She was long past sixty, when she was given 
charge over a dozen cows. She, by that means, 
earned her board and lodging; but it was no 
sinecure. 

To look after calm, contemplative beasts, who 
have no thought of grazing on forbidden land, is 
an idyllic pleasure. You sit in the shade of a wil- 
low-tree, you watch the river flow, and the birds 
fly, or you go to sleep to the music of crickets and 
frogs, from time to time opening a drowsy eye to 
make sure that all is well. Such was not, however 
— not by a good deal — the case with our old lady. 
Her cows, an undisciplined, incalculable lot, made 
life terribly hard for her. Now the villainous brutes 
would use their horns to fight with one another; 
now, sniffing the air, despising the grass of their 
own pasture, they would catch the scent of some 
clover-field, or the delicate fragrance of the unripe 
grain. They would overleap fences, run devasta- 
ting races among the tender crops, stretch out their 
necks to snatch at the apple twigs ; and the poor 
old woman, leaning with one hand on her stick, 
flourishing in the other an impotent cudgel, would 
trot hobbling after her charges from morning 



118 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



until night. The worst was that evil tongues went 
about saying that she did not look after her herd, 
and that her administration would be a short 
one. 

A kindly-intentioned passer presented her with a 
shepherd dog, a rough, sturdy fellow, with agile 
legs and fearsome jaws. Matters improved after his 
coming. The poor old woman enjoyed her first taste 
of peace. But there remained room for improve- 
ment still. However effective he were, the dog 
could not be everywhere at once. While he chased 
big Russet through the sainfoin, the little fawn- 
coloured heifer, lively as an imp, was devouring 
the young beet-tops. The best dog under such 
provocation would lose his temper. That is what 
happened. The cows came home with torn ears 
and bleeding nostrils. The dog was condemned, he 
must be sent away. 

Then, at the end of her strength, experiencing 
the emotions of a minister who feels the reins of 
government slipping from his hands, the old cow- 
minder found in her grizzled head a supreme 
expedient. 

She provided herself with two chains, several 



THE POINT OF VIEW 119 



yards long, and fastened her animals, six and six. 
From that day their ranging and their whimsies 
were a thing of the past. Fastened to the same 
chain, the cows hindered and interfered with each 
other. They were forced to remain where they be- 
longed and graze as they should. As for the old 
woman, she constructed with stones and moss, 
under a neighbouring beech-tree, a commodious 
seat, more solid than most thrones, from which she 
watched her subjects, knitting the while. 

It was by binding them together that she had 
subdued them. 

THE POINT OF VIEW 

THERE were half a dozen of us descend- 
ing the Saleve, after lunch together at 
Monnetier, at the inn of the "Little 
Hunchback. " 

It was the end of November and radiant 
weather. The mountain top glittered with hoar- 
frost. But half-way down the slope one might have 
supposed it springtime. At every step, little daisies 
smiled up at us from the warm sward. The bushes 



120 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



spread out to the heat of the sun their branches 
upon which there were no leaves, but a splendid 
harvest of many coloured berries. Rose-haws, holly- 
berries, juniper-berries, wild sloes; some bright 
red, like coral, others wine-coloured, dark ma- 
roon, or black as ink. Our pockets gradually filled 
with these mountain products, and we thought of 
little hands which would joyfully be held up, cup- 
wise, to receive the rustic booty, and utilize it in 
their games, down yonder, behind the walls of the 
great city. 

Suddenly, as I was stooping to gather a superb 
puff-ball, I saw, caught on the thorns of a wild- 
rose tree, a white tatter shivering in the breeze; a 
light feather, a tribute, no doubt, levied by the 
bush on the wing of some bird. Hardly had the 
thought formed, than I saw, near at hand, a space 
strewn with feathers, some of which were spotted 
with blood. It was the torn garment of a wagtail, 
recognizable still from its blue, grey, and gold tints, 
and the long tapering tail-feathers. Upon closer in- 
vestigation, I found upon the moss the beak and 
the two claws. . 

Poor little bird, surprised by some hawk, strip- 



THE POINT OF VIEW 121 



ped alive and devoured on the spot ! . . . We 
reconstructed in thought that tragedy enacted 
beneath a bush. We saw the steel pounce com- 
pressing the frail body, the rapacious beak tearing 
off the feathers in bunches, to bite the flesh and 
drink the blood. . . . The breeze blowing 
over the mountain-side agitated those fragments 
of wings, those airy bits of down: one might have 
believed they were shuddering still at the memory 
of horrors. 

All that aroused our pity, while a melancholy 
breath stirred among the yellowed wisps of grass 
and the dry leaves. Poor pretty bird, so blithe, so 
graceful, how much it must have suffered. . . . 

But gradually, another order of thought pre- 
sented itself to our minds, with regard to the same 
objects. Though we stood upon the scene of a 
tragedy, we were not equally in the presence of 
scraps left over from breakfast? Somebody had 
here been eaten; but somebody else had had a 
feast! And the same fact completely changed its 
nature, accordingly as we looked at it from the 
point of view of the wagtail or the hawk. For the lat- 
ter, the place where we stood must be associated 



122 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

with satisfaction and enjoyment. Every morsel 
torn from the body of his victim had been for him 
a delicious mouthful. What had meant, for the 
small bird, atrocious terror at being seized, car- 
ried off . . . had meant for the voracious 
bird the intense pleasure of successful chase and 
prey possessed. 

These reflections opened remote vistas to us. 
Are there not occurrences in human society akin to 
this which held our steps in suspense and arrested 
our thoughts ? 

In passing through that society, does one not 
discover fragments, ruins, poor left-over shreds of 
sacrificed lives, comparable to those blood-dabbled 
feathers which had just told us such a mournful 
tale ? . . . . We say then : " Some one has 
been devoured here ! " and we are filled with hor- 
ror. But we do not think that some one likewise has 
here eaten his fill and departed satisfied. Yet we 
ought not to neglect that other aspect of the ques- 
tion. However hard-hearted it may appear, it con- 
tains a great lesson. And it is by remembering it 
that we come to understand why men hold such 
different opinions upon the selfsame fact. They do 



THE POINT OF VIEW 123 

so because the eater and the eaten can never agree 
concerning the pleasure of the feast. 

This question of the point of view becomes more 
serious still when we are first struck by the fair side 
of a thing. You see a crowd enjoying itself, a man 
getting benefit or pleasure. Be sure you look at the 
other side of the medal. Inquire if that pleasure be 
not taken at the expense of others, if the profit, 
which is a matter of congratulation to some, be not 
the price of sorrow and sometimes degradation, to 
others. Do not share on this point the indifference 
of the masses. For that indifference creates in us 
the soul of a bird of prey. 

Most men, often unconsciously, love their own 
kind as the hawk loves little birds. Am I sure, 
friendly reader, that your love and mine are not of 
that nature ? 

Delicate feathers, downy adornment of the 
pretty songster first to greet the dawn, now be- 
come the sad toy of the wind, you bring to mind the 
fate of more than one laughing, thoughtless girl ! 

Those who followed her, dogged her steps, 
spoke to her of love, where are they now ? 

They have flown . . . like the hawk, who, 



124 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



having finished his repast, wipes his beak on the 
grass and spread his wings toward new scenes and 
other conquests. 

FOR PAPA'S BIRTHDAY 

FOR the last ten days the house has worn an 
air of mystery. In every corner, con- 
spiracies and concealment. At every turn, 
one is met by a closed door, and bureau-drawers, 
which habitually are open, now are locked. What is 
the reason ? — It is very simple. Papa's birth- 
day is at hand, and the children are preparing sur- 
prises. In that old bureau -drawer lies hidden a 
carefully tied package; and behind that door, 
which cannot be made to unclose, some one sits in 
solitary confinement, completing a magnificent 
geographical map. 

Seeing all his brothers and sisters so full of 
business, baby has not wished to remain quite in 
the rear of them. For several days he has disap- 
peared at certain hours and no one has been able 
to discover where he conceals himself. He has 
found in the garret, behind the pigeon-house, a 



FOR PAPA'S BIRTHDAY 125 



little nook where he goes to work, too, for papa. 
What is he doing ? That is his secret. . . . 

But the eve of the great day has arrived. The 
children have gone to bed with injunctions to old 
Lizette to wake them very early, that they may 
surprise papa as soon as he wakes. As for baby, he 
climbed on Lizette's knee, gave her two sounding 
kisses, and whispered in her ear: " You must wake 
me at a quarter to — very early. " 

At dawn the next day, all the young people dress 
in haste, come and go in great excitement, arm 
themselves with their gifts and crowd outside 
papa's door, ready to enter at the first sound of 
stirring. Finally, a little ear glued to the key -hole 
believes it hears a noise. The time is come: all, 
laden with bouquets, boxes, works of art, burst into 
the room. They cover the paternal bed with 
flowers, and pile up the presents on it. At the un- 
packing of these precious articles, there are em- 
braces, exclamations without end. 

So far, baby has given nothing. He stands apart 
and, with his hands behind his back, watches the 
rest. As soon as the commotion is over, he comes 
forward a trifle timidly and, under the astonished 



126 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



eyes of his elders, proffers a crumpled roll of grey 
paper and a letter. 

When papa unrolls the paper, he finds a many- 
coloured tapestry, without precise form or pattern, 
in its effect indescribable. 

As for the letter, it bears, by way of address, a 
series of scribbled hieroglyphs and four pages 
covered with the same sign-language, as well as 
several ink-spots. Baby, let it be told in your ear, 
is absolutely unlettered. At sight of these gifts the 
older brothers laugh aloud, and the disconcerted 
child bursts into tears. 

But papa, deeply moved, lifts the poor little 
man in his arms, kisses him tenderly, and says: 
"Thanks, dear baby. Be comforted — don't cry; 
I am delighted with your present; I shall have your 
pretty tapestry made into slippers for myself, and I 
will keep your letter in my pocket-book; for I can 
read your handwriting perfectly. You wrote that 
you loved me ; and you worked the same thing into 
your tapestry with red, blue, green, and yellow 
wools. That is all that was necessary. Later on, you 
will offer me, like your brothers, specimens of more 
perfect workmanship, and good wishes written in 



WINGS 



127 



approved form. May they always say as heartily: 
" I love my papa ! " 



WINGS 




RED fire is blazing at the farther end 
of the bake-shop. Threaded upon gigan- 
, tic spits, fowls are turning and brown- 



ing before the flame. And around the crackling 
hearth, the crowd of purchasers and the cooks 
chat together while they warm their hands. 

In the street the autumn wind is blustering. 
What strange objects are those fluttering in front 
of the show-window, apparently intended to serve 
as the shop's sign ? They are — wings. Hanging in 
long strings, they blow hither and thither at the 
will of the wind. They are of every size and colour : 
crows' wings, partridge wings, wild-duck wings; 
broad sail-like wings of sea-gulls, light oar-like 
wings of swallows and sparrows, without order, 
ruffled, unmatched. 

These wings have flown under all skies, have 
skimmed all seas. They have stretched toward 
heights, have rocked on storms. They have warm- 
ed broods, announced spring, given warning of 



128 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



tempests, and they have come to the term of their 
voyages here. 

Some were stopped in full flight by the hunter's 
bullet, others were caught in snares. For always 
some enemy is pursuing the creature with wings. 
The poacher lies in watch for it at the wood's edge; 
traps and nets are spread for it in the sown fields ; 
and near the nest itself, on the familiar branch, the 
treacherous bird-lime awaits it. . . . 

Poor wings ! Are you not the image of so many 
young hopes, of so many souls full of soaring as- 
piration in the morning of life ? Joyous swarm, 
like you they rise and circle in the light. But too 
many hostile forces are in league against them. 
When life, relentless and cruel, has done its work, 
we find at night only mutilated fragments, similar 
to the bloody feathers which a bitter wind drives 
along the path. 

And yet, broken and defeated wings, wings you 
remain. You speak to us of the vast unknown, of 
luminous summits, of skyey plains. You say, even 
when vanquished, that it is nobler to perish strain- 
ing toward altitudes, than to preserve oneself un- 
hurt by crawling along the earth. 



DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE 129 



Broken wings, I salute you I As I brush along 
this obscure thoroughfare, in the November fog, 
you have brought back to my memory the beauti- 
ful summer evenings when one suspends his 
dreams upon the flight of the wood-pigeons spread- 
ing their golden wings toward an invisible Para- 
dise. 

THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE 

SHOULD one look backward ? Christ says 
No. But when He speaks thus, He has ref- 
erence to useless regrets, and, above all, to 
those utilitarian or pusillanimous afterthoughts 
which prevent our walking firmly ahead in the fur- 
row, when once we have set our hand to the plough. 
In that case, we must resolutely turn our backs 
upon what lies behind us, and make every effort to 
go ahead. But Christ did not forbid us to remem- 
ber. The only religious rite established by Him, the 
Last Supper, is accompanied by the words : " This 
do in remembrance of me. " And for nineteen cen- 
turies Christianity has fed upon that remembrance 
as upon the bread of life. 

Remembrance is a great force. 



130 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



Forgetting is easy for some. What is past, for 
them, is finished, and what they no longer see, no 
longer exists. 

A past fault is not a fault any more; a past bene- 
fit no longer counts; a former friend is a stranger; 
an old sorrow, importunate and to be put out of 
mind. As for the dead, they are for good and all 
dead. 

When you remind persons with that sort of 
memory of an old promise, a long-past event, they 
treat you like a weak-minded victim of hallucina- 
tions. " Have we time to busy ourselves with such 
things ? We must think of the present. Only the 
present counts. " 

I rebel against that axiom. To forget is the sign 
of a superficial mind, of a shallow soul. If there is a 
thing which distinguishes man from the brutes, it 
is that he fives not only in the present, and that he 
is not the slave of the passing hour, the actual im- 
pression. He sees further. His capacity to believe 
in distant facts, to think of what he can no longer 
see or touch; to preserve in his heart and in his 
mind the remembrance of things, all trace of 
which has vanished from the visible world, is one 



DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE 131 

of his principal privileges. Without remembrance, 
humanity would be condemned to walk without 
getting any further ahead, to turn forever in the 
same rut. Remember I is one of the great laws of 
life. 

This law must be taken into consideration in 
every domain. Woe to countries who forget their 
history, repeat the same mistakes, and lose the 
fruits of the most useful experiences; woe to 
churches whose narrow understanding cannot 
stretch beyond the moment in which we live, to go 
back to their origins and gather energy, reverence, 
charitable breadth; woe to families in which the 
memory of the beloved dead is banished, and 
nothing fosters piety toward the past; woe to the 
man who never looks backward to see himself live 
in the vanished days, to examine in God's sight 
the road travelled by him, and strengthen himself 
by repentance and gratitude. 

Let us not allow the noisy mob of a bustling 
present to sweep us along with it. If the past were 
nothing, of what value would the present be ? Does 
not the preciousness of things lie in that part of 
them which is permanent ? 



132 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

Life is good only to the man who gathers its 
fruit into his soul and piously preserves it. Our 
lives are given us for that labour. All that passes 
must leave in us a mark that endures. Life is a 
language whose sense and point are the eternal 
realities. If you do not wish to lose your life, you 
must remember. That is why the leaves which fall, 
the dead who go to sleep, the suns which set, the 
voices which become still, the years which wear to 
their close, all say to us : Remember. 

BORROWING AND EXPENDING 

BY what do men live ? In these words seem 
contained, in a general way, the question 
of bread, of material and spiritual sub- 
sistence. 

And this same question of the feeding of hu- 
manity is concerned with the investigation of the 
quality of what is consumed. This food does not 
nourish, if it does not actually injure health. That 
food is tonic and comforting. In the words : " Man 
does not live by bread alone, but by every word 
proceeding out of the mouth of God, " the essen- 



BORROWING AND EXPENDING 133 



tial has been condensed, as it would seem, upon 
that vital point. 

And yet the point of view relative to food, ma- 
terial and spiritual, remains fragmentary. 

By what do men live? Bread, yes. Words of 
truth, justice, hope, faith, tenderness — Again, yes. 

But that represents only one aspect of the prob- 
lem. If there is nothing further, we are in full con- 
fusion. However surprising this may appear, every 
one will readily see it. 

What would become of a man, considered as a 
physical being, whose life should be devoted to 
nourishing himself, absorbing tonics, inhaling pure 
air, taking baths, following treatments ? I fear that 
so much care of himself would speedily make an 
end of his health, if he did not expend the vigour 
acquired, in movement and effort. 

If, however, he were to dispose of this danger by 
rational hygiene, exercise, salutary fatigue, would 
he not remain, if he achieved nothing of any con- 
sequence, a useless being and a parasite ? 

This is true not only in the region of material 
life, but in all degrees and in all regions of moral 
life. 



134 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



And here we come upon the subject of a tend- 
ency, noble and spiritual in appearance, but in 
reality deplorable. I refer to those who have no 
thought but to nourish their souls, find spiritual 
refreshment, adorn their intelligences, gratify 
themselves with artistic impressions or even 
religious ones. 

They are spiritual epicures, with a refined greed 
for art, for the word, for the idea. 

The vulgar eater and drinker is, I willingly grant, 
several degrees lower than these delicate beings. 
But, setting aside the outward form, who cannot 
see that the point of view is identical ? 

The epicure cares in life only for enjoyment. His 
brother in the region of the soul cares only, in art, 
literature, morality, religion, for the enjoyment he 
can gather from them. The first say: "What shall 
we eat, what shall we drink ? " The great business 
of the day is the bill of fare. The second say: 
"What could we read, hear, or contemplate, to 
create in us an agreeable frame of mind ? " Morally, 
they are alike, no choice whatever between them, 
and, if there could be shades in condemnation, I 
should reserve the intenser shade for the spiritual 



BORROWING AND EXPENDING 135 



epicures. Alas, I know that the majority of us must 
in some measure be classed with them. I go further. 
Were you the most exquisite soul, having, upon 
consideration of all the good accessible to man, 
reached the conclusion that the supreme good is 
peace of heart, I should know your life to be 
gnawed by a secret canker, if you gave indications 
of nothing but the exclusive aspiration after in- 
terior happiness, were that happiness even peace 
in God. In spite of the elevation of your point of 
view, I should know you to be exposed to the 
gravest dangers, threatened with complete loss of 
equilibrium, in danger particularly of seeing the 
treasure wholly escape you for the sake of which 
you had sacrificed all. 

Like the others whom we have been consider- 
ing, you would have tried to make the whole of 
life consist in what is but a part of it: I mean, in 
borrowing. 

Life is not that alone. Living is neither eating 
nor drinking, were it from the purest sources, 
were it from the sources of which One said: 
"Whoever shall drink of this water shall never 
thirst. " Living is striving, is fulfilling some task, is 



136 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



pursuing some object. Living is receiving, I agree; 
but it is also giving. Whoever borrows, contracts a 
debt. In giving, he makes the attempt to pay it. 

As soon as food becomes its own object, it no 
longer benefits. 

That is why there are so many people who eat 
well and have not good health, and so many others 
who, though they nourish themselves with the 
most beautiful moral precepts, gain nothing in 
quality. They have fed upon the highest morality, 
the most generous examples, upon the marrow of 
lions. They have absorbed the most adorable 
music, contemplated all the masterpieces of art, 
they have spent their lives satisfying their souls 
with the most divine consolations. But we see 
them no further ahead for all that. Their souls are 
dry and their life is sterile. 

Why ? — There has been no corresponding 
action. Of all they have received, nothing has been 
transformed, nor utilized, nor applied. Nourish- 
ment without work kills a man. How is the above - 
quoted word of Christ completed by the beautiful 
utterance : " My food is to do the will of Him who 
sent me!" 



PROPRIETORS ALL 137 



By what do men live ? By bread, by spiritual 
food, and, in addition, by bearing their burden, 
ploughing their furrow, producing their fruit. 
What is wanting in the case of so many who are in 
lack of nothing in the way of food ? Work is want- 
ing, which makes the food profitable. They are in 
need of the refreshment which comes from a 
function found and fulfilled, were it even in 
pain and sorrow. 

PROPRIETORS ALL 

TO own things, that is the all-important 
question. It lies at the bottom of most 
human strife. Not only do we quarrel 
over possessions, but we quarrel over the degree of 
claim assured to each by the title of proprietor. 
Ideas upon property are as much a subject of con- 
troversy as property itself. 

In this ardour to lay a practical hand upon so 
many desirable objects, in this passion expended 
upon the definition of property and the demarca- 
tion of its boundaries, upon the affirmation or the 
negation of its principles, most people lose sight of 



138 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



a point which is not, however, without a certain im- 
portance. And it is upon that point I have an idea. 
Its presence in a mind can become, in the midst of 
the struggle for possession, a source of peace and 
contentment. It enables us to be happy without 
taking anything away from anybody, without even 
having the shadow of an impulse to do so. My 
idea has stood a long test. I can recommend it as 
an old friend. Easy to cultivate, as little exacting as 
certain plants which do well wherever they grow, 
it can take root in the cracks of the roughest rock. 
If it finds no earth, it feeds on air, on light, on 
a drop of dew. Everything is transformed by its 
presence. How can I make you know and love it ? 
For it belongs to a world knowing neither exclu- 
sion nor jealousy, where possessions increase even 
as you share them. 

If I should make a theory of my friend, I should 
fear to seem tedious; this friend dislikes a dry 
style and shuns pedants. While we are about it, 
I will tell you a story. 

The forest is vast and deep. April has cast over it 
her tender green veil, too thin to interfere yet with 



PROPRIETORS ALL 139 



the sun caressing the little primroses and wood- 
violets at the foot of the great trees. The song of 
blackbirds and tomtits, at once merry and grave, 
resounds among the branches. One can tell by 
their singing how seriously they take themselves. 
And certainly what they say is extremely import- 
ant. If only I could understand! But is it not 
enough to be here at this early period of the spring, 
received like the child of the house, caressed by all 
the breezes, greeted by all the flowers, lulled by 
that same warbling of birds, heard long ago by the 
child, and retaining for the grown man an inex- 
pressible charm ? How ask for more ? 

Let us look rather between the arching trees out 
over the country. The hill is white with diaphanous 
snow, drifting like a light cloud over the hedges 
and the trees. Pear-trees, plum-trees, cherry-trees 
— down to the smallest sweet-briar bush, all have 
put on the livery of spring. 

Here is a wild-rose tree on which, not far from 
her nest, a light-hearted wren sits singing. It 
spreads out wing-like branches, upon which hun- 
dreds of wild roses will settle by and by in charm- 
ing clusters, 



140 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



O, ever-new splendour of the returning spring, 
infinite grace of the young year ! . . . 

The sound of footsteps draws me from my 
dream. They are the game-keeper's. He fixes upon 
me an interrogative eye which transforms the ven- 
erable tree-stump upon which I sit into a pillory. 

" What are you doing there ? " 

" I am resting. " 

"It is forbidden. Didn't you read the notice? 
Move on!" 

" Very well, Monsieur, I will move on. — On 
whose land am I ? " 

"Prince X's. ..." 

" Does he come often to his estate ? " 

" A fortnight every year. " 

" At what time of the year ? " 

" The hunting season. " 

So I move on, looking, inhaling the air, drinking 
in the perfume of the wild-cherry trees, which 
their master never sees in bloom. When the game- 
keeper has disappeared at the further end of a 
glade, as I see no notice to the contrary, I sit 
down upon a sun-warm pile of brush. 

It looked, certainly, as if it were soliciting me, 



PROPRIETORS ALL 141 



like a proffered arm-chair. Absolute solitude. No 
one, not even a cat. On the other hand, how many 
charming little companions ! A beetle crawls out of 
the ground, there, beneath my eyes. He has come 
to see if the table has been laid. That plump drone, 
in her rummaging, is looking for a nest to deposit 
her eggs, seed of the future hive. A shrew-mouse is 
taking his bath at the foot of a beech-tree, among 
the roots of which he lives. Bees are paddling in 
the broad, yellow dandelions, getting their legs 
thickly dusted with pollen. I wonder whether all 
those insects know on whose land we are ? — 
Thereupon a red-breast comes hopping quite near, 
and fastens upon me his large black eye. What a 
difference between that eye and the game-keeper's ! 
The latter revealed to me that I was on land be- 
longing to Prince X. . . . who is, however, 
never at home. The former makes me believe that 
I am on God's land, perpetually present on his es- 
tate. Where should one feel more genuinely at 
home than in the midst of divine works, calling to 
mind the Father? 

I believe the red-breast is better informed than 
the game-keeper. I am here at home. This park is 



142 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



my own. Things belong to those who appreciate 
and get the good of them. Oh, my sort of owner- 
ship is not troublesome; it deprives nobody, and 
could not even be objected to by Prince X. . . . 
in his conventional illusion. And yet, I am happier 
than he in this domain surrounding me, this 
splendid kingdom which cannot be taken from me. 
Let the prince keep it or sell it to another, my 
property in it abides. Unless the next owner should 
cut down the trees. But that hypothesis takes us 
from our subject, to which let us return. 

The whole world, by many of its sides, history, 
institutions, art, doctrine and even men, belongs to 
those who can appreciate and take possession of 
it. " All things are ours, " said the Apostle. 

When one has risen to this superior and spiritual 
sense of property, he no more envies so-called 
proprietors than one would envy a person who 
should proclaim himself owner of the sun, or 
Sirius or the morning-star. One can live very 
grandly on an estate, though not an inch of it be- 
long to him, and this is not a vain imagining, such 
as a poor madman's happiness in fancying himself 
an emperor or a king, but it is the most direct, in- 



PROPRIETORS ALL 143 



dependent, unassailable and genuinely profitable 
manner of proprietorship there can be. 

To possess things in the large sense in which 
they belong to God and to everybody, is happiness 
and wealth. The heart derives far greater advant- 
age from it than from ownership in the narrow 
sense, open to contention, to loss, and, at best, sel- 
fish, exclusive in its character. In order to be glad of 
goods belonging to himself alone, and of benefit to 
no one beside himself, a person must have the soul of 
a solitary old wild-boar. To enjoy what is accessible 
to all, what increases in value as it is distributed 
among brethren, is to ascend toward spiritual 
heights, toward the permanent sources of imperish- 
able treasures, toward the only authentic royalty. 

I certainly do wish every one to have his neces- 
sary share in this world, and, if I were the master, 
every family from this day forth should have a 
little house of its own with a garden in the sun- 
shine. Meanwhile, there is something even better, 
and my idea accomplishes a miracle. By means of 
it, we can, in a magnificent interpretation of that 
usually narrow word, truly realize the ideal: 
Proprietors all. 



144 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



THE RABBITS OF THE PASTEUR 
INSTITUTE 

IN the serene brightness of a February after- 
noon, I was walking along Rue Vaugirard, 
which leads from the animated streets of 
the Latin Quarter to the quiet, almost rural su- 
burbs. There lie the market -gardens, asleep under 
the snow, retired nooks reminding one of the 
province and the country. It is all so different from 
the great Parisian ant-hill, full of bustle and noise, 
that a beneficent calm invades one. In spite of him- 
self, one thinks: "How pleasant it would be to 
meditate and work here!" Suddenly, the eye is 
struck by a great iron railing which seems to an- 
nounce some important establishment. In the 
garden it encloses stands a handsome, yet plain, 
house, built of brick and stone, in the style of Louis 
XIII. Above the door is written: Pasteur Insti- 
tute. Public Subscription. 1888. 

That then is the house the name of which is 
unknown to none, far as the civilized world ex- 
tends, which even the savages in their distant 
cabins must have heard spoken. An attraction of 



RABBITS OF PASTEUR INSTITUTE 145 

a very especial sort, mingled with respect and 
curiosity, possessed me before that dwelling. 
Feeling all that is human in me wake to intenser 
life, I would gladly have bared my head. I there- 
upon remembered that I was slightly acquainted 
with one of the inhabitants of those walls. He 
would perhaps let me in, and show me at close 
range what I had so far honoured from a distance. 
I crossed the threshold as if it had been that of a 
sanctuary, not wholly free from the fear of being 
taken for an indiscreet reporter, for I know that 
of all cases of rabies, the only sort they refuse to 
take an interest in here, is that of the rabid 
reporter. 

I found my friend at the end of a large, very 
light passageway, by which the principal build- 
ing, where the master lives, is connected with the 
laboratories. He held in his hand a pair of pincers, 
with which he had just caught up by the skin of 
its neck a little white mouse, with astonished pink 
eyes. When he heard what I wanted, he was so 
kind as to interrupt his work to do the honours of 
the house. 

He began by introducing me to the stove- 



146 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



rooms, where mixtures for fertilizing were cool- 
ing in a favourable temperature. We then saw the 
laboratories where specialists make their re- 
searches. Each of them has selected some viru- 
lent or contagious disease, and secluded himself 
to wrest its secret from it. On every side phials, 
distilling-glasses, rabbit-cages, chicken, mice. One 
could hear the barking outside of the dogs iso- 
lated in a spacious dog-kennel. Truth to tell, an 
outsider cannot make head or tail of all this. My 
attention, I frankly own, was chiefly attracted to 
those poor animals, inoculated with every imag- 
inable virus. Some among them, still lively, were 
nibbling at their carrots as usual; others, already 
under the influence of disease, were drooping in 
dejected attitudes, or dying in their corner. In a 
tub, higglety-pigglety, a lot of dead bodies awaited 
dissection. And yet, in spite of the painfulness of 
the sight, I could not but compare the fate of 
those obscure animals to the fate of so many men 
who pass through life without any expenditure 
whatever of themselves. Totally useless, their 
parasitical existence represents a net loss to 
humanity. They pass, in their fatal egotism, per- 



UNFLATTERING ANALOGY 147 



mitting all the trouble they have been to others 
to end absolutely in themselves, deceiving all the 
hopes placed in them. Those poor animals at 
least, will not have lived for nothing. Passive but 
indispensable collaborators in a vast design, they 
will have served a purpose. And if there were any 
choice possible for myself between the part played 
by them and that played by the men who live 
solely to eat, enjoy and take their ease, I feel I 
should not hesitate. Better to live there, in one of 
those cages, in a coat of fur, with rabies, tubercu- 
losis or cholera injected into one's veins, than be 
a man and of no use at all. 



UNFLATTERING ANALOGY 

AS I walked one day in the good city of 
Nancy, I chanced to enter an abat- 
toir, where butchers were busy kill- 
ing a herd of pigs and making them ready for 
market. A few of them, their toilet complete, were 
hanging on hooks; others, likewise dead, were 
being dipped into boiling water, and shorn of their 
bristles. A few were suffering the decisive opera- 



148 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



tion of bleeding. The remainder of the pack, 
about twenty big fellows dressed in silk, were 
awaiting their turn. I was amazed at the attitude 
of the latter. They appeared perfectly calm and 
unconcerned; a few even came and, with little 
grunts of satisfaction, licked the warm blood of 
their brothers. 

They only began to be excited and squeal, when 
they themselves felt the butcher's hands upon 
their ears. 

There are men who behave exactly like those 
stupid brutes. The flourishing industry of public 
defamation by the press is a terrible instance of it. 

For years we have been assisting at this sort of 
spectacle : 

A newspaper pounces upon a man, strips him 
of his honour, cuts him into pieces and dissects 
him, exposes him mutilated in show-windows, 
and offers him to the multitude for food. Nine 
times out of ten, the man is no more guilty than 
you or I. It had merely been perceived that there 
might be some advantage in pillorying him. He 
was perhaps in somebody's way. That somebody 



UNFLATTERING ANALOGY 149 



set those bloodhounds on him. While they do 
their disgraceful work, the passers look on. Some 
enjoy it like any other amusement. To the low 
instincts of their nature, such a spectacle is a 
feast. Others, from stupidity, believe they are 
assisting at a deserved punishment, the worst 
malefactors of the pen having in our days assumed 
the function of judges. The number is unfortu- 
nately large of the simple-minded who never 
question the word of those sinister jugglers. There 
is, of course, here and there, some one seeing in its 
true colours the nameless infamy committed be- 
neath their eyes. He pities the victims, but thinks 
it wisest to go his way. It is not safe to trouble 
rogues in the exercise of their trade, one's own 
skin may been endangered. Thus it happens that 
every one keeps still; only beginning to cry out 
when he himself is gripped by the ear. 

Does not this comparison seem intolerable, 
gentlemen and dear fellow-citizens ? 

But, however irritating, can you say it is not 
correct ? 

And so? . . . If we should profit by the 
mortifying lesson ? If, being, as we are, all in 



150 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



the same boat, we should stand up for one an- 
other ? 

APPLES 

A MAN was laboriously digging in the 
earth. He had already made a hole in 
which half the length of his leg dis- 
appeared and was making it still deeper. Chil- 
dren were playing near by. Born curious, they 
approached the man at work and asked: "What 
are you digging for ? " 
"Apples," answered he. 

Unanimously the youthful flock burst into 
Homeric laughter. "He is digging for apples! 
What a joke. . . . Apples in the ground ! He 
must be thinking of potatoes! . . . But ap- 
ples, it is too funny. . . . Ha, ha, ha!" 

"Can't you see that he is laughing at us?" 
said one of the more shrewd among the com- 
pany: "Let us go along and leave him to his 
apples." 

" Laughing at you ? " answered the man. " In- 
deed not, children. What I tell you is positive fact ; 
there is neither joke in it nor nonsense. I am dig- 



APPLES 



151 



ging this hole in order to have apples, and if you 
will wait a moment, you will understand." 

"Let us wait then, and we shall see whether 
they are crabs or leather-coats he will dig up." 

After taking out a few more spadefuls of earth, 
the man thought the hole sufficiently deep, 
dumped into it a basketful of rich soil, went off 
and returned bringing a little sapling which he 
carefully planted beneath the attentive eyes of the 
children. 

The operation complete, he said to them : " You 
see, I told you the truth. In two or three years 
from now this young apple-tree will blossom. The 
following autumn it will bear fruit. You shall 
come and taste the apples with me." 

Those who work for the future are often the 
butt of mockery. Their efforts seem absurd and 
sterile. The short-sighted call them fools. But 
they are not troubled by this. They know that if 
they would one day see golden juicy fruit swing- 
ing above their heads, they must begin by digging 
a hole in the earth. 



152 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



FRIENDSHIP 

THOSE who know life do not ask for cate- 
gorical declarations upon every sub- 
ject. There are so many subjects which 
require answers — if these are to be wise — full 
of reservations and contradictory elements. And 
pleasant though it be to affirm oneself without 
qualification the champion or the adversary of an 
idea, the occasions are scarce indeed when it can 
be done. Too many things bear the same name, 
which are, according to circumstances, good, fa- 
vourable, fortunate — or harmful and deplor- 
able. 

If you should ask me so simple a question as: 
" Is friendship desirable or not ? " I could not pos- 
sibly answer by a direct affirmative or negative. 
Firstly, there are all sorts of friendships, very dif- 
ferent in value. Can friendship which is a tacit 
covenant of mutual admiration, a sort of com- 
plicity in indulgence for the respective faults of 
the friends, be compared with the friendship, sin- 
cere and courageous, which insists upon justice, 
straightforwardness, generosity in the friend, and 



FRIENDSHIP 



153 



is severe from very loyalty ? Can one place in the 
same category the man loving his friend as one 
might love a good pear, a pleasant wine, and the 
one loving him with the whole ardour of devotion ? 
Can we pronounce a single judgment upon such 
dissimilar sentiments ? 

Friendship, furthermore, even sincere and de- 
voted friendship, does not produce the same effect 
upon all. To some it is strengthening, to others 
weakening; these live by it, those die from it. I 
have under my eyes a symbol of the friendship 
which kills. 

From the side of this mountain-road, where a 
mossy rock affords me a comfortable seat, I look 
at an old acquaintance. It is a pine-tree, about 
twenty years old. When I first saw it, a wild cle- 
matis vine had entwined itself about the young 
tree's trunk: fit image of friendship which draws 
human beings close to one another. Lissome and 
graceful, the clematis, which without the prop- 
ping pine-tree would have spread along the ground, 
begarlanded the stronger and older plant, and 
formed charming festoons among its lower 
branches. 



154 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



I saw it a year later. The vine mingled its foliage 
with that of its friend up to two thirds of the lat- 
ter's height, starring the sombre green of the pine 
with its snowy whiteness. It was pretty as possible 
and touching to see, like the fusion of two lives. 
But I had secret misgivings. They are to-day jus- 
tified by the event. 

The clematis now clasps the friend's trunk with 
robust arms, winds itself spirally around each of 
its branches, curls its tendrils around its tiniest 
twig. The crown of the tree, which formerly 
reared itself skyward, vigorous and straight, has 
become invisible. Hundreds of shoots from the 
invading friend have reached it, grown beyond it, 
wrapped it round. The tree has disappeared, the 
vine smothers it. And now the one who appeared 
to me formerly a graceful image of friendship, 
seems to me an unspeakable monster with num- 
berless suckers, clasping its victim and drinking 
its blood. 

And yet, has it not under that appalling form 
remained a representation of certain friendships 
— and what friendships, dear Lord, how un- 
worthy of the name! 



THE VETERAN 155 



Are there not murderous friendships, annihi- 
lating their object, and in their horrible egotism 
feeding upon it ? 

What enemy can do us as much harm as 
friends of that kind ? 

THE VETERAN 

Pious Homage to the Memory of Madame 
Gabriel Salvador 

THE crust of ice had long been broken on 
the slopes of the hill, and in the wide 
clefts, the green was beginning to show: 
Tender grass, spangled with translucent drops, 
profusion of hardy water-cress; fresh smiling 
daisies, like little peasant girls in white aprons, on 
a Sunday morning. Among the bushes floated the 
perfume of invisible violets, rang the song of the 
blackbirds industriously constructing, with grass 
and moss, their clay-lined nests. 

Lower, toward the plain, the eye might behold 
the universal awakening: All the fruit-trees were 
clothed in white and pink. Everywhere, flowery 



156 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



masses, brilliant bursts of colour, infinite proces- 
sions, along which glittered sumptuously the un- 
furled banners of spring. 

Here, splendid cherry-trees, snow-white be- 
neath the blue sky, an explosion of flowers in the 
sunshine. 

Further, pear-trees upbearing their immacu- 
late pyramids, all musical with the murmur of 
bees. 

Young saplings proudly flaunted their first blos- 
soming twigs. 

The wild-rose trees bowed their flower-starred 
arches; the hawthorn wrapped herself in her 
bridal veil. 

And, intoxicated by the pure air, with the light 
step of those led on by hope, I wandered in a 
dream of youth and beauty. 

I suddenly came upon that which stopped me 
short. What I saw was so touching, so full of in- 
terest and significance, that I could not but yield 
to its fascination. 

And what then was it ? — This it was : 

An old, old apple-tree, bent, gnarled, deprived 
by some gale of nearly all his limbs, and retaining 



THE VETERAN 157 



little more than a fragment of stump, with a wisp 
of twig, was standing there, beside the road. He 
looked just like a veteran ill-used by life, an inva- 
lid warming in the sunshine what was left of his 
limbs. Stern in aspect, with time-darkened bark, 
he stood conspicuous amid the surrounding youth. 
But that was not what made him remarkable. 
Upon the solitary branch he had left, he held 
straight up in the air a bunch of blossoms. He 
decorated himself with it as with a plume, a cock- 
ade, appearing to make himself tall as possible 
and add his note to the general concert. 

I was electrified by the sight. With tears of emo- 
tion in my eyes, I clapped my hands and cried 
aloud for the festally-adorned country to hear: 
"Long life to the veteran with his flowers!" — 
That old apple-tree, what a professor of vigorous, 
sound philosophy! He had but one twig left, but 
he wished in that last survival of his former 
strength to take his part in what was going on, be 
in touch with his companions, younger or more 
fortunate. He did not say: "Aren't they lucky, 
those fellows?" He did not sigh: "Is it really 
worth while to go on blossoming ? " He did what 



158 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



he could, deaf to base suggestions, ignorant of the 
ugly little word : " What is the good ? " 

So long as he had one drop of sap left there 
should be blossoms. Well done, a thousand times 
well done! He was in the truth. Let us do as 
he did. 

THE CLOG-MAKER AND THE 
SWALLOW 

IT is a thing agreed upon that the queerest 
gift, just as much as the most appropriate 
and agreeable one, must be judged by the 
intention it stands for, and not by its value or the 
satisfaction it procures. But obvious things are 
not always the ones which inspire a man's prac- 
tice. There are too many reasons for being unrea- 
sonable. Our actions are usually accomplished in 
the midst of a whirlpool of passions, sudden im- 
pressions, which blind us like a cloud of dust. 
When the cloud disperses, our action reveals itself 
in the clear light of good sense as absurd; but the 
thing is done, and, as a last touch of absurdity, 
we feel by some curious logic obliged to justify to 



THE CLOG-MAKER 159 



others a conduct in our own eyes indefensible. 
Thus, from esprit de corps, a chief will shield 
before the public subordinates whose indiscre- 
tions he has severely reprimanded in the privacy 
of the closet. 

How many people have been vexed with friends 
because of the clumsiness of their gifts ! How many 
little children, bringing with beaming faces gifts 
suggested by unmingled affection, have turned 
away in consternation, with bitter tears at the 
mocking reception they met with, and the epi- 
thets : babies, sillies, and what not ? 

After which, I do not think I will apologize for 
telling you a story of an almost infantile simplicity. 
There is a vast difference between understanding 
a thing and practising it. And I will gaily expose 
myself to your certain scorn, in the doubtful hope 
of forcing you to think. 

Under the shed where a maker of wooden shoes 
plied his trade, a swallow had built her nest. The 
shoe-maker, with fine bits of beech, horn-beam, 
or alder wood, roughly squared, fashioned inex- 
pensive foot-wear, warm in winter and cool in 
summer. The fashion changes in kid shoes, but 



160 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



in wooden shoes it does not. They are all more or 
less alike, and the simplest pattern is the best. It 
was that sort our man usually made, for his tools 
were few and his art was elementary. As for stock, 
he had none. As soon as finished, his wares dis- 
appeared. But he put his heart into his simple 
trade. Men enough there are despising their pro- 
fession, miscalling it, and declaring that their sons 
shall follow any trade but that, but this man loved 
his work and thought it delectable. When the vil- 
lage-people passed his house to go to their work 
on week-days, or to church on Sundays, he was 
proud to hear the music of their clumping clogs. 
The children, let out from school, thumped the 
road gaily in their noisy races, and in the evening, 
along the country roads, the laughter-loving 
younger generation mingled with their merry 
shouting the clog-clog of wooden shoes running 
with heavy nimbleness. Had he not shod them all, 
the worthy shoe-maker? Whether their paths 
were rough or smooth, good or bad, they trod 
them with wooden soles furnished by him. And 
certainly the career of none was a matter of indif- 
ference to him. And the more interested he be- 



THE CLOG-MAKER 161 



came in the destinies of others, the more he cared 
about his own especial work. 

The little swallow was the incessantly twittering 
and active witness of this. From her mad flights 
through the blue, in pursuit of midges, from her 
dizzy antics in the air resonant with her cries, she 
came flying back with the swiftness of thought to 
see what her host might be doing. She came so 
near to brushing his cheek as she passed him, he 
could feel the wind of her wing ; she deafened him 
with gay morning greetings. At daybreak she 
sounded a shrill reveille and her friend, hearing 
her, sprang light-heartedly from bed, glad to take 
up the day's task again. 

The shadow on the picture was the long ab- 
sence in winter, and the uncertainty of seeing her 
return. After the middle of September, the shop 
seemed sad. The swallow had joined the flock of 
her companions and spread her wings toward the 
land of sunshine. 

How narrowly, when spring came, did our shoe- 
maker watch the waking of the primroses, the 
budding of the violets! As soon as a sunbeam 
warmed his little garden on the south side of the 



162 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



house, he would say to himself : " Here comes the 
season of reunion. Will she come back this year ? 
Has she had good travelling and favourable 
winds ? " 

Last year, he said to himself : " I will welcome 
her with a gift ! " He selected two very perfect bits 
of wood, sharpened his gimlet, his chisels, his 
knives, and produced two loves in the way of 
clogs. 

" Clogs for a swallow ? " you will say. " What a 
ridiculous idea, more worthy of the clown who 
put it into execution, than of the delicate creature, 
receiver of his absurd gift!" You are a thousand 
times right; my shoe-maker was not remarkable 
for tact. 

However, as an attenuating circumstance, what 
else could he have offered, since all he knew how 
to make was clogs ? 

But now the swallow reappeared. On the man's 
side, the most cordial reception; on her's, over- 
flowing enthusiasm, cries reaching to the summits 
of the poplars, aerial demonstrations, mad dart- 
ings hither and thither. 

The clogs had been placed near last year's nest. 



THE CLOG-MAKER 163 



When the little traveller came indoors and saw 
them, she at once understood — Did she put 
them on ? — Of course not. But she got inside of 
one, and began to twitter her prettiest pieces. She 
spent the night in it and the next day, getting in 
and out every few minutes with little cries of sat- 
isfaction. Later, she adopted it altogether as her 
nest. When her brood had been hatched, and her 
young ones had feathers, she made them sit in 
line on the edges of the wooden shoes, as on a bal- 
cony, and brought to them there the flies and 
beetles young mouths are so eager to be stopped 
with. She put the clogs — that foolish gift which 
any other but herself would have greeted with 
derision or disgust — to every imaginable use. 

She was a little swallow of uncommon intelli- 
gence, no doubt; but she had even more heart 
than brain. Both of these may be measured in 
people by their fashion of receiving certain gifts, 
notable for nothing but the good-will which offers 
them. 

Alas, the measuring-line need often be but a 
short one! 



164 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



CHRIST THE SMUGGLER 




T the frontier of Russian Poland, a 
little Jew was in trouble. 



.JL JL In order to go back to his native 
land, to see his old father and mother, he must 
possess a document not to be found among the 
papers of a child of Israel: a certificate of bap- 
tism. He had been informed that unless he could 
show such a document, the gates would remain 
closed to him. 

Farewell, loving mother's-kisses ; farewell, all 
hope of seeing his beloved childhood's home! 
The nearer he drew to the line where the haughty 
custom-officers stand on guard, the further re- 
moved he felt from the object of his journey. Ha- 
rassed with anguish, he sat down at the foot of a 
tree, took his head between his hands and sobbed. 

A stranger stopped in front of him, who said: 
" Why do you weep ? " 

The young man lifted his eyes and met a glance 
such as he had never before beheld. The One who , 
stood there had the features of Abraham's race, 
but more beautiful, transformed by an inde- 



CHRIST THE SMUGGLER 165 

scribable radiance of universal humanity. They 
expressed kindness, and such power as inspires 
confidence; they suggested luminous vistas open 
upon the intimate home of souls, the passage to 
which each one of us is secretly striving to find. 

"I can tell him without fear," thought the 
youth, "for he is kind." 

" I am weeping," he said, " because of the hard- 
heartedness of men and my own ill-fortune. I 
have come from a foreign land, I stand on the 
border-line of my own country and I cannot 
cross it; for I am a Jew and wish to remain one; 
wherefore I cannot produce the certificate of bap- 
tism required by the disciples of Jesus." 

"Disciples of Jesus . . ." said the un- 
known after him, and a cloud of sadness over- 
cast the pure clearness of his benignant eyes. 
" Are you sure it was He taught them such prac- 
tices ? " 

" It is inhuman, is it not, to keep sons from em- 
bracing their mothers ? " 

"Yes, it is inhuman, and therefore contrary to 
the spirit of the Son of Man. To exact baptism as 
a condition of crossing a frontier, is worse still. 



166 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



To do violence to souls in the name of Him who 
died to set them free, what obstinate blindness! 
Oh, holy and divine tidings of the Gospel, how 
have you been profaned ! " 

" And how can I help myself ? Passer, what do 
you advise me to do ? " 

" Hide under my mantle ; we will go in together, 
no one will say a word; only, promise me to do 
what I shall ask you." 

" I promise." 

"Forgive them; they know not what they do." 

ON THE THRESHOLD OF CENTURIES 

A WIDESPREAD fashion of represent- 
ing ending years, or centuries, those 
clusters of years, is to lend them 
the appearance of disagreeable old persons, who 
depart from us grumbling. The new year, the 
new century, are represented as graceful children 
coming toward us with beaming smiles and hands 
full of flowers. Such symbolism denotes an un- 
worthy manner of looking at things. It reminds 
one of those persons, unfortunate in their rela- 



ON THRESHOLD OF CENTURIES 167 

tions with others, who invariably end by quarrel- 
ing with the friends they first enthusiastically 
attached themselves to. That miserable ending 
and that exaggeratedly hopeful beginning are 
alike the result of a lack of equity and good 
sense. If you had not placed so many unjustifiable 
expectations upon men with whom you had no 
sufficient acquaintance, you would not, upon 
ampler experience of them, have had to relinquish 
so many illusions. You make your companions pay 
for your own mistake in adorning them with im- 
aginary virtues. Be more reserved at first, and you 
will be able to end on a more satisfactory key. 
The centuries are like men. I do not know the 
one just arriving. I shall beware of surrounding 
it with a rosy halo or yet with a dark storm- 
cloud. Let us give it credit. 

The century which is leaving is better known to 
us. Some loudly condemn it. Others exalt it at the 
expense of preceding centuries. It is a question of . 
point of view. It is, no doubt, not as bad as some 
say, nor as extraordinary as others believe. 
Seated on the shore of that ocean of ages into which 
its star is setting, I reverently bare my head to it for 



168 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



all the work it undertook and all the sufferings it 
knew. The sum of its labours seems to me colossal. 
Had work ever before reached such intensity ? I do 
not think so. Were it only for its activity, I should 
bow to it at its departure, as we salute a tired 
worker at the end of day. Such workers are often 
sowers; they have laboured for the future; the 
fruit of their effort comes to ripeness after them. 
In the furrows it ploughed toilsomely and ploughed 
deep, the century reaching its close did not scatter 
bad grain only. There was seed sown of justice and 
truth, obscurely, painfully, under an often inclem- 
ent sky. That seed will grow. 

If we look at it closely, this century, at the mo- 
ment of entering into its rest, wears on its forehead 
lines of care: it is not satisfied, and profoundly 
feels where it has failed. That is a happy indica- 
tion and not a sign of weakness. The new century 
will profit by it. 

All taken into account, I love more than I can 
say the century that is leaving us. I love it for its 
tormented, laborious life, its pioneering, its pa- 
tience in research, its scrupulous care for truth, 
its privations, its voluntary poverty, its courage in 



ON THRESHOLD OF CENTURIES 169 

sleeping out-of-doors whilst it constructed habita- 
tions for future generations. 

But above all I love it for reasons which every- 
one can share with me. The reasons are these : All 
whom I have known in life belonged to it. 

It is marked as by milestones by their actions, 
their struggles, their graves, or their birthdays. 

I came in its second half, I was received kindly. 
It gave me my father and my mother. My children 
were born in it. My friends are its sons. It was the 
medium through which I became acquainted with 
the past, humanity, God. The voices which have 
sounded in my ears, echoed in it. The eyes that 
have looked into mine, in joy or sorrow, opened 
in it. In it, alas ! closed to the earthly day the eyes 
at which my heart drank as from fountains of 
light. 

How should I not love it, the century in which 
God appointed me to be one of the colony founded 
by him upon earth ? Every heart-beat of mine be- 
longs to it. Formed of its substance, flesh of its 
flesh, I am its devoted child. Even as one cherishes 
the walks of his youth, the fields of home, the fa- 
miliar trees, the rocks of his native shores or the 



170 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



summits of his native mountains, I cherish this 
century, its physiognomy, its horizons. Its beauty 
delights me, its sufferings torture me, its voice sets 
my soul vibrating in response, its degradations 
make me blush and weep. Its vices and its crimes 
wring blood from my heart, I live of its life, my 
destiny is bound up with its destiny. 

I, therefore, do not feel qualified to compare it 
with any other century. All my direct sentiments, 
my immediate notions, I have derived from this 
century : what I know of other centuries is at sec- 
ond hand. I see them through the self created by 
my own century: thus it happens that it is to me 
the original and other centuries the copy, even 
though in reality the opposite should be true. 

With what emotion, O my century, do I hail 
your last day! Peace with you, divine peace! 
Peace upon all that pertains to you ! As I turn over 
your pages, I am glad to think of them as a part of 
the Eternal Book in which men and centuries 
stand inscribed, the totality of which represents 
our completed destiny. 

In this book, that we may not stand in too great 
dismay at certain portions of it, it behooves us to 



OLD CHRISTMASES 171 



read as much as possible. Sometimes the word at 
the bottom of the page is cut off, its end is on the 
page that follows. Though the pages end, the text 
continues. The centuries are similarly tied to one 
another. And the century leaving us lives anew in 
the century just born, both being fugitive figures in 
a lasting design. 

OLD CHRISTMASES 

IT often happens that observances are more 
closely followed which are left to the good- 
will of each, than observances which have 
been designed and prescribed. 

An instance of this is the commemoration of the 
birth of Christ, compared with that of his death. 

For the latter, Christ took measures. He who had 
hardly instituted or appointed anything, taught 
His disciples to take bread and wine together in re- 
membrance of Him. He uttered, upon that occa- 
sion, words which have remained venerable 
among all, and followed them with the request: 
"This do in remembrance of me," Now, it has 
happened that this solemn repast has become 



172 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



through the ages the meeting-ground of controver- 
sy. Similarly, in certain families days of reunion are 
days of battle. Not one word pronounced by Christ 
on the last evening of his earthly life has had the 
fortune to pass peacefully down history. Each one 
of them has been the toy of sectarian imaginations, 
sectarian heat. And now that the antagonists have 
calmed down, indifference has succeeded hostility. 
The Last Supper is deserted. Where it is cele- 
brated, how rare are true communions. Do we not 
appear at it, usually, like mere figures in a picture 
of fraternity, belied by facts ? 

Was that what Jesus asked of us, when, already 
upon the threshold of the invisible world, he left us 
this prayer : " This do in remembrance of me. " 

As to his birth, Christ gave no thought to the 
manner of its celebration by His disciples. They 
do not appear to have remembered it during His 
life. Had he ever any knowledge of the adorable 
stories begarlanding His crib for us ? It is hardly 
probable. And behold, that forgotten, neglected 
birthday has conquered a place of honour. It is 
celebrated in conditions in which the Saviour might 
recognize His own purposes. To speak of one as- 



OLD CHRISTMASES 173 



pect only: Jesus loved children as no one has ever 
loved them. " Let them come to me ! " he said to the 
lofty apostles, eager to guard Him from that merry, 
unruly crowd, suspected incapable of edification. 
No doubt, those most serious ancestors of our tra- 
ditions had occasion that day and often, in similar 
circumstances, to believe the Master touched with 
a harmless insanity. 

No matter, the intentions of the Son of Man 
have been largely realized. His birthday has be- 
come the day of the children. No earthly day has 
shed more brightness upon their path. No Church- 
festival gives more life to the immeasurable truth 
of the promise : " I shall be with you even to the 
end of the world. " None makes it sweeter to the 
heart. 

Christmas has a charm beyond them all. It was 
the Christian soul, filled full with Jesus, which 
created this festival. Every generation has given 
it something of its own. There has been a rivalry of 
good-will. In the Eucharist, according to a doc- 
trine, the abuse of which must not make us forget 
its true and sorrowful profoundness, Christ dies 
from age to age for our sins, and will suffer until 



174 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



the last sinner is saved. In the radiance of Christ- 
mas, Christ smiles eternally upon the little ones 
.. . . and the grown-up who can make them- 
selves children again. . . . 

Where else in the world can one find such an ac- 
cumulation of memories ? The Christmases of his 
childhood light up a blessed corner in the heart of 
every man. The more he becomes aged and joyless, 
the brighter shines the light there, in the beloved 
past. 

Let me close my eyes, forget the present, and for 
a moment live over again the happy time when I 
had a grandfather, a grandmother, a father and 
mother, and all the wealth of life and hope God 
sows so bountifully in the childish soul. 

I can see, on winter evenings, the white earth 
and the glowing western sky. We knew what it 
meant, that red glow, in the neighbourhood of 
Christmas-Day. Our grandmothers had told us: 
" The Christmas-Lady is baking her cakes. " And 
the lively childish imagination, to which nothing 
is impossible, readily erected up in the golden 
clouds a heavenly kitchen in which comely angels 
heated the ovens and kneaded the dough. Heaven 



OLD CHRISTMASES 175 



was so near that the smoke of our roofs seemed to 
float toward its courts. 

At the coming of evening, however, and the 
closing in of night, it could not be but a shadow 
should fall upon the picture. For if well-behaved 
children see angels, naughty boys are afraid of 
Someone making ready to give them their deserts 
This personage was Hans-Drabb. I made the per- 
sonal acquaintance of this unaccommodating 
individual, who preceded by a few days the amiable 
white lady, bearer of the twinkling fir-tree. He 
never frightened us more than was endurable ; and 
well justified we thought him and a good sort of fel- 
low, in spite of his stern face. He had, day by day, 
watched us, taken account of our boyish mischief 
and misdeeds. And if he offered bundles of rods to 
our mothers, with the assistance of which to sub- 
due us, was he not fulfilling an indispensable func- 
tion ? We therefore had for Hans-Drabb a respect- 
ful, somewhat timorous liking. Besides, did not the 
rattling of chains in the lobbies, the knockings at 
the door, the gruff and threatening sound of his 
voice, all announce the approach of the divine 
evening? Each one of us, if he could have ex- 



176 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



pressed his soul, would have said with the 
poet : 

"7 will walk and live in my starry dream." — 

The longed-for evening arrived. After the short 
December day, — too long for our impatience, — 
the shade deepened, the stars came forth. In the 
room which grew darker and darker, the children 
were gathered together. Papa used to hold me on 
his knees. I can still feel his chin brushing the top 
of my head, and pricking a little. And we would 
ask: "Why is mama not in the room? Has she 
gone, like last year, on the same occasion, to call 
upon that old lady in the neighbourhood ? Will she 
miss the lovely Christmas-Lady again ? What a 
pity! ..." 

Suddenlv, the ringing of a bell resounded in 
the corridor, drawing nearer and nearer. The door 
opened with an effect of mystery. Veiled, silent, 
the celestial lady entered, earning, like a torch, the 
diminutive fir-tree. 

Each of us said his prayer. Oh, those little artless, 
simple-hearted prayers ! I have begun once more to 
say them. If I become old, I shall end by saying no 



OLD CHRISTMASES 177 

others. The good lady listened to them. At their 
close, her voice was heard, gentle, with echoes in 
it of another world. 

And, mysteriously as it had come, her white 
form withdrew, leaving in our souls, for weeks to 
follow, a luminous wake. 

Later, upon such a day, having grown bigger, 
and become a narrow observer of all things, I 
looked closely and long at the lady through her 
veil. She had lost a tooth in exactly the same 
place as mama. Light flashed upon me. Mama's 
absence at every visit of the gracious lady com- 
pleted my illumination. Without destroying the 
faith of the younger children, I was from that day 
forth fixed in my conviction : The Christmas-Lady 
was mama! 

The years have passed. Almost all the guests of 
those faraway Christmases have entered the 
eternal habitations. When the fir-trees are lighted 
to-day, and my thought follow each beloved 
member of my family, it flies toward the absent in 
the land of the consoling mystery. I feel their souls 
surrounding ours. And, as in the thrice-happy 
hours of childhood, heaven and earth seem to 



178 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



draw near to each other and mingle. Slowly, in the 
heart of the mature man, a union has been effected 
between the ingenuous, forever holy and well- 
founded faith of little children, and the discovery of 
the keen-eyed older boy. The Christmas-Lady, — I 
believe in her. There was truth in what happened. 
The reddened evening skies verily are indications 
of her labour of love. We are remembered up 
there ! Further than our eyes can reach, an invisi- 
ble loving-kindness is watching over us and pre- 
paring what shall gladden our hearts. The eyes of 
the children saw truly. They penetrate further than 
the astronomical glasses which pretend that there 
is nothing in the infinite. For, what sweeter proof 
of what goes on up there, what better interpreter 
of His intentions, what richer dispenser of His gifts 
has the Father in Heaven sent us, than our 
mothers ? It is therefore true : " The Christmas- 
Lady is mama," sister of the angels, beloved 
messenger of the good God. 

We are told that no plummet has ever sounded 
the depth of certain lakes. The reason is, perhaps, 
that the line was not sufficiently long. But this is 
sure: one deep there is which no fathoming -line, 



OLD CHRIST MASES 179 



however perfected, can measure. It is the mater- 
nal heart, and it is filled with love. 

My God, devoutly I wish that all children should 
have beautiful Christmases, and that in this cold 
world, gloomy as certain December nights, those 
who are called the grown-up should be able to find, 
back in the depth of their childhood soul a lumin- 
ous refuge, warm, radiant with love and with hope. 



THE CHILDREN'S CORNER 



THE OLD MAN OF THE FOREST AND 
HIS WOLF 



THERE was, once upon a time, a very old 
man who had dreadfully wicked grown- 
up sons. Every day they berated their 
father and sometimes they even beat him. The old 
man, at last, feeling unhappy past all endurance, 
left home one evening with the intention of never 
returning. He walked and he walked and he 
walked, as far as his legs would carry him, and 
finally arrived in a huge forest, where he fell asleep, 
utterly exhausted with fatigue. The next morning, 
when he woke up, he saw fine red strawberries 
growing all around, of which he made his break- 
fast. Then he set off again walking, for fear lest 
his sons should follow and ill-treat him. For hours 
and hours he went deeper and deeper into the 
woods, without meeting a living soul. The setting 
sun was beginning to colour the sky when he be- 
held, standing in the midst of rugged rocks, an 
183 



184 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



oak-tree of colossal size. Six men, stretching out 
their arms and holding hands, would hardly have 
been able to clasp it. Now, this tree was hollow 
at the base. Between two roots, a large hole 
opened like a door upon the interior. The old 
man stooped to look in, and, to his great sur- 
prise, discovered a sort of little chamber, into 
which he at once crawled. It was high enough to 
stand up in, and wide enough to he down in. 
" Nowhere, " thought he, " shall I be more com- 
fortable than here, " and he determined to make 
it his dwelling. 

He lived there all summer, eating berries, hear- 
ing the blackbirds sing, watching the hares and deer 
that peopled the forest. Often he would gather 
healing herbs, good for every disease of man or 
beast. He collected stores of them, as well as of 
nuts, filberts, acorns, roots and fruits, in order to 
have food for winter. 

But he very seldom caught any glimpse of a 
human being. 

One fine morning, near Christmas-time, he heard 
shouts, the barking of dogs, the report of guns ! It 
was a wolf-hunt which sportsmen and peasants 



OLD MAN OF THE FOREST 185 

had organized in the forest. At nightfall they 
passed the tree in which the old man lived, drag- 
ging after them half a dozen enormous wolves. 
The old man did not make the slightest noise, and 
no one knew he was there. 

A few days later, as he was walking in the forest, 
to pick up a little dead wood, he heard a singular 
sound, like a voice lamenting and calling for help, 
He stopped to listen whence the voice came, and 
found, under a rock, a little, half-starved wolf. It 
was, no doubt, the cub of one of the big beasts killed 
by the hunters. Its tongue hung out, and it could 
scarcely drag itself along. The old man lifted it up, 
put it under his cloak, and took it home to his tree. 

"Alas, what can I do to save you from death, 
poor orphan ? " he said ; " I have only dried fruits 
to give you. ..." But, suddenly, he had an 
idea. Not far from the spot, there ran a path, not 
often used, where, at certain hours the farmer's 
wife passed, taking milk to the isolated convent. 
The old man had always avoided letting this wo- 
man see him ; but, thinking she might be willing to 
give him milk for his nursling, he decided to ap- 
proach her. 



186 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



The farmer's wife was a brave woman, and a 
kind one, too. When she saw this strange man, with 
his long, grey beard, coming out of the woods, she 
not only was not afraid, but she stepped up to him 
and asked if he were hungry. " No, " he said, " but 
there is some one, not far from here, who is very 
thirsty. I beg you will give me every day a little 
milk for him, and, in exchange, I will give you 
herbs to cure your children or your sick cows. " 
The farmer's wife gladly agreed, and the old man 
made haste to go and fetch the hungry wolf- 
cub. 

Fed on milk, the little wolf grew fast. He got his 
teeth and was able to forage for his own food; he 
remained, however, gentle and faithful as a dog. 

The old man and he were inseparable, and as, 
from time to time, some wood-chopper caught 
sight of them at a distance, there was talk soon, 
in the country roundabout, of the old man of the 
forest and his wolf. These two mysterious beings 
set people's imaginations working; the children 
dreamed of them at night. 

Now, on the edge of the woods there lived, in a 
charming cottage, a very happy family of charcoal- 



OLD MAN OF THE FOREST 187 



burners: father, mother, and three sons. The two 
older ones, George and Gustavus, were well- 
behaved boys. But little Fritz was the most ac- 
complished wretch, particularly since he had been 
put into trousers. From the day his mother had 
taken off his girl's frock and dressed him like a boy, 
he had felt so big nobody could make him mind 
any more. But at table it was he behaved worst. He 
found fault with his food. If there was porridge, he 
wished for soup ; if he was given milk, he demand- 
ed an egg. 

One evening, sitting in front of a magnificent 
onion-soup, he flatly refused to eat it, saying that 
kind of soup was bad for the teeth, and made the 
hair fall out. He even forgot himself so far as to 
throw his spoon across the room into a corner, 
where the little cat, less particular than he, 
promptly and with vast delight, fell to licking it. 

" Fritz, " said his mother, " What would the old 
man of the forest say to your behaviour, if he could 
see you ? " 

"The old man of the forest," answered Fritz, 
"I am not afraid of him: let him just show his 
nose in here : I am ready for him ! " 



188 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



The mother opened the window and called into 
the night : " Old man of the forest, come and bring 
your wolf with you ! . . . " Hardly had she 
spoken, than, greatly to her terror, a gruff voice 
answered: "Here we are!" And at the same mo- 
ment she saw two balls of fire shining in the dark- 
ness. They were the wolf's eyes. The father and 
mother looked at each other in consternation. As 
for the three children, they disappeared in the 
twinkling of an eye: Gustavus under the feather- 
puff on the bed, George in a bureau drawer, Fritz 
in a great soup-kettle near the fireplace. For 
greater safety, the sly fellow covered himself with a 
fagot. 

In a moment the wooden clogs of the old man of 
the forest were heard out on the doorstep, and in he 
walked with his wolf. " Why did you call us ? " he 
said. The poor woman, very much frightened, an- 
swered in a shaking voice : " . . . I was only 
pretending ... as one might say . . . 
to give a scare to that naughty little Fritz . . . 
who doesn't mind anybody at all. . . . But I 
did not think you were so near. ..." 

"No matter," answered the old man; "You 



OLD MAN OF THE FOREST 189 

called us, here we are, and we will go to work. 
Where are the children?" 

The mother then called her sons and said :"Come 
out, children! Gustavus, George, Fritz, come out 
and let us see you ! " At once the eiderdown on the 
bed was seen to move, a leg appeared, then an- 
other, then a whole little boy. It was Gustavus. 
He timidly drew near. But as he was a good boy, 
the old man muttered : " This fellow doesn't need 
us ; where are the others ? " Then one of the bureau 
drawers creaked, and, to the old man's great 
amazement, slowly opened, all by itself. A black 
head was thrust out, with two frightened eyes; it 
was George. He ran to his mother and hugged 
close to her. She reassured him, saying: "Fear 
nothing, my child; you have not been naughty!" 

That rascal, Fritz, was still missing. He did not 
stir. 

The old man was growing impatient, and he 
said to his wolf : " Go and find me the naughty 
boy hiding somewhere in this room. " The wolf 
snuffed at the furniture and stopped in front of the 
kettle. " No, no, you must be mistaken, " said the 
old man, "what you smell there is boiled beef; 



190 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



what we are looking for is a child. " The wolf 
was not to be called off; he even lifted one paw, 
and tried to push away the fagot. 

Then the old man went to him, lifted off the 
fagot himself, and saw the body of a small boy 
cowering in the soup-kettle. 

" What singular soup ! " he cried. " A leek would 
be nice, in addition, a turnip and a carrot — ■ 
Come, come, " he pursued in a rough voice, " show 
your face, pick up your spoon, and eat your soup. 
. . . And quickly, if you please. " 

Fritz pushed his head up above the kettle's rim, 
and his first glance met the flaming eyes of the 
wolf. The fractious little fellow was shaking like a 
leaf. 

" Come out, all the same, " said the old man, 
"he won't devour you to-day; we will try first 
to make a good boy of you without eating you 
up." 

Fritz quickly went to his chair and ate his 
soup like a brave one. 

The father and mother invited the old man to sit 
down and have supper with them, which he was 
delighted to do. 



OLD MAN OF THE FOREST 191 

The wolf was given a bone which he crunched 
in front of the fire. Fritz watched him cracking it 
with his great teeth. The sight of those fangs and 
claws gave him goose-flesh all over. 

After supper, the old man got up and said: 
" Good-bye ! In a fortnight we will come back to see 
how matters stand ! " 

From that night on, Fritz's conduct improved. 

When the old man came again, he heard none 
but good reports, and he made Fritz a gift of a tiny 
soup-kettle carved in wood : " Keep it, my child, in 
remembrance of me. And if, later on, you should 
receive a present of a watch, you can wear it as a 
charm. " 

Not long after, in the middle of winter, the char- 
coal-burner, passing through the forest and think- 
ing of the old man, was saying to himself: "It is 
singular, one doesn't see him any more, what can 
have become of him ? " 

Suddenly, he saw on the ground, under the snow, 
a strange form, long, something like a human 
figure stretched out under a white sheet. He went 
to it, pushed aside the frozen coverlet a little, and 
recognized the old man. He was dead, the snow 



192 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



had buried him. Huddled close against him mo- 
tionless and cold, wrapped in the same shroud, lay 
the wolf. When his friend had died, he had stood 
watch over him without ever leaving him, and had 
perished on the spot from grief and hunger. . . . 

Since that time the children of that country are 
no longer afraid of the old man of the forest or his 
wolf; they know that these are dead, and they even 
take flowers to their grave. But those children say 
to themselves — and how sensible it is in them to 
say it ! — " It's no reason, those two being dead, 
for disobeying Papa and Mama!" 

THE PEAR 

IT was a superb pear, having but one fault, 
which was to be the only one. 
If it had had brothers, let me tell you 
at once, the small tree upon which it grew would 
have been bent under the burden, for it was no 
thicker than the leg of a doll, and no higher than 
the hand of a child of twelve can reach. 

And this pear was its first fruit. In a corner of 
the garden, the sapling had grown peacefully 



THE PEAR 



193 



under the watchful eye of a Papa, who loved it very 
nearly as much as a child. The preceding spring, 
a cluster of blossoms bursting from one big bud 
had gladdened the gardener's heart. But of the lot 
only one blossom had matured. 

As soon as this was recognized, the far-sighted 
father of the family called together his sons and 
daughters around the diminutive pear-tree, intro- 
duced them to the pear, which was about the size 
of a hazelnut, and said to them : " Children, you 
see this fruit ; I care a great deal about it. Respect 
it, be careful not to shake the tree or to play ball in 
this part of the garden. " 

After this, the corner in which the pear-tree grew 
was declared to be holy ground; it was only ap- 
proached with religious awe. 

The precious pear grew bigger. From week to 
week, one might note its increased size. By Saint 
John's Day, it was big as a pigeon's egg. By the 
middle of August, it was big as the biggest hen's 
egg. If a storm blew up, the whole household was 
in misery over the pear. They would have liked to 
bring it indoors : they were like a shepherdess with 
her sheep. Fortunately, it suffered no injury from 



194 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



either shower or wind. It swung smiling on its 
branch, which bent lower and lower as the season 
wore on. It was now nearly the end of September. 
Golden, with pink reflections, the beautiful fruit 
could be seen gleaming from afar. 

It was becoming dangerous. It was becoming an 
object of temptation, I do not say for the older 
children, all reasonable and able to control their 
appetites, but for that chubby, red-cheeked Henry, 
six years old, and very greedy indeed. In the long 
hours during which the others were at school, he 
played in the garden ; and since the pear was nearly 
ripe, he frequently went to look at it. By dint of 
looking at it, he no longer merely admired it, he 
coveted it. In order to watch it more satisfactorily, 
he lay down at the foot of the tree. Once, even, ab- 
sorbed in contemplation, he fell asleep and dream- 
ed that he ate the pear. This was. luckily, only a 
dream : if he had really eaten it, what would Papa 
have said ? The bare thought of it made him shiver, 
for he was not a naughty child, and only wished 
to do right. . . . 

For several days he shunned the dangerous cor- 
ner. . . . But a sort of fascination, more and 



THE PEAR 



195 



more irresistible, took possession of the poor young 
one, and drew him toward the forbidden fruit. 
When he thought himself alone, he climbed up on 
a footstool, drew the branch to him, touched the 
fruit, sniffed at it with delight and thought its 
fragrance like that of vanilla. . . . 

One evening he had been put to bed. As he 
could not go to sleep at once, he fell to thinking 
of the pear. Through the open window of the 
ground floor, the breeze wafted in from the garden 
the exquisite scent of ripe fruit. His old nurse was 
the only one at home; all the others were dining 
out. Henry made the following reflection: "My 
brothers and sisters are sitting at table, eating good 
things, and I am here all alone. If I should go and 
pick the pear and eat it ! At least I should have a 
little enjoyment, too. And no one would know 
it. . . . " 

Softly he got up, put on his slippers and, in his 
night-dress, climbed out of the window, which was 
very near the ground. He was already standing on 
the stool, at the foot of the tree, he was already 
stretching out his hand, and his heart was beating 
very hard. At that moment, through the leaves, 



196 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



just above the pear of his temptation, he saw a star 
looking at him. . . . 

"It has seen me ... "he cried, jumped 
down, fled and hid himself in bed. . . . 

When his mother came in, two hours later, to kiss 
him, he was sound asleep; but his round cheeks 
and his pillow bore traces of weeping. 

His mother asked him next morning : " Why did 
you cry in the night, my darling . . . tell 
me ? . . . " And Henry, tenderly plied with 
questions, made a complete confession, inter- 
rupted by sobs. 

At noon, when lunch was over, the father, who 
knew all, said to his youngest son: "Henry, take 
this basket and run into the garden to pick the ripe 
pear, that we may taste it. But be careful not to let 
it drop. " 

Colouring, the child hastened to obey. 

When the pear, juicy and fragrant, was cut, 
every member of the family received a section 
and ate it. Mama then took her piece, laid it on 
Henry's plate and said: "Here, darling, eat my 
share, too. " 

The little fellow ate it with relish, his eyes 



THE GREAT RED EGG 197 



fastened upon his mother. "Is it good?" asked 
Papa. " Good, but Mama is better. " 

THE GREAT RED EGG 

THE day was ending. The labourer was 
finishing his work in the freshly-sown 
field, where he had been toiling from 
daybreak to dewfall. The tired oxen were ru- 
minating beneath the old apple-trees. While he 
waited for father, the child, still very young, sat at 
a little distance from him, looking dreamily off 
over the landscape. His eyes wandered in the soft 
light shed over the hill, investing the trees, the 
bushes, the far-off village roofs, with a calm, mys- 
terious aspect, infinitely sweet. He listened to the 
songs of the birds, growing fainter as the light grew 
less. And his childish soul filled with those tender 
images which build up in us, never to be destroyed, 
the love of our native soil. 

For some minutes, his glance had been steadily 
fastened upon the same thing. Up there, on the 
horizon, above the hill, whose dark outline stands 
forth clearly against the sky, is a hay-rick, and 



198 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



above it a gigantic ball, like the egg of some pro- 
digious bird, lying in its colossal nest. The ball is 
the colour of molten lava. And the child looks at 
it, admiring without understanding. 

In his thoughts slowly, stirs the desire to climb 
up to the hay -mound, to see the egg at close range 
and take it for his own. He gets up, he walks ahead 
like one in a dream, with his eyes fixed upon the 
red ball and blind to all else. 

But the father, having finally laid aside his hoe, 
calls his son. Seeing him walk away, thus absorbed, 
he says : " Where are you going ? " 

" I am going up yonder, toward the hay-rick, to 
get the great red egg. See how beautiful it is; let us 
hurry, for it is growing smaller and it might fall 
into the ravine. ... " 

" That red egg, my child, is the setting sun. The 
evening mist, in which its image floats, lends it that 
hot brick-colour and that oval shape. See how it 
appears to melt upon its nest of hay. Now it is only 
a point ; now it has disappeared. ..." 

Then, in the darkening shade, the little child 
sighed. 

" Why do you sigh, my child ? " 



I 

THE GREAT RED EGG 199 

" Because the beautiful red egg has disappeared 
from the nest, and I never shall be able to touch it, 
nor to have it, nor to take it away with me . . . 
never ! " 

"Do not speak like that, my child. You have 
wanted that which no one can have. Leave that 
thought and give me your hand. " 

And along the rustic roads, between the orderly 
fields, the hedges set with trees, they went hand in 
hand ; behind them, the heavy-footed oxen and the 
creak of the plough- wheels, recalling in the twi- 
light the cry, so like it, of the guinea-hen „ 

Between two tall hedges, where it was already 
deep night, the father stood still. 

" Look ! " he said to his son, " What can you see 
in the dark?" 

"Father, I see blue sparks, which go out and 
then shine again. How pretty they are to look at; 
but let us leave. Why should we stop and look at 
what we cannot have ? Those little stars, no doubt, 
are not intended for children any more than the 
great red egg." 

" Quite the reverse, my darling; you will see how 
easy it is to take them with us, " 



200 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



The father tore off from the roadside a broad 
wild-sorrel leaf, stooped and carefully pushed 
apart the branches of the bush, then delicately 
picked up from among the dead wood, the lumin- 
ous points which presently, united upon the leaf, 
shed marvellous emerald and sapphire reflections. 

Now the unharnessed oxen have shaken their 
mighty heads and gone into the stable, where, with 
calmly eager muzzles they pull down the hay from 
the rack. The little boy lingers in the garden. 
Under the dark hedge, he watches his beloved 
fireflies. They move slowly upon the grass lighted 
by their phosphorescence. And the quiet brilliancy 
radiating from their little bodies, appears in the 
child's eyes like a reflection cast fom some inde- 
scribable magic kingdom of which he feels himself 
the king. It would be impossible to be happier in 
the possession of a more assured good. 

If you grow up, little peasant, life has in store 
for you more lessons than one. But it will often re- 
peat the lesson of to-night. Our childish desires go 
wandering in the distance, in pursuit of imaginary 
happiness. And our eyes grow gloomy before the in- 



GREY-COAT AND SATIN-COAT 201 



accessible. Who will take us by the hand, and 
guide us toward the humble path of peace, where, 
quite close to us, happiness may be found ? 

GREY-COAT AND SATIN-COAT 

Christmas Story 

IT was Christmas-Day, when the sun rises so 
late that the most slothful can admire it at 
its rising. And this morning it was magnifi- 
cent. It emerged from a thin vapour, light as gauze, 
and shed upon the milky sky, the snowy earth, the 
trees sparkling with the frost, a rosy tinge of in- 
finite loveliness. At the foot of a very old oak-tree, 
on the edge of the wood, the rays of this beautiful 
winter sun shone upon the house-door of Miss 
Satin-coat, the prettiest little mouse that could be 
imagined. Snow is not whiter than was her coat. 
The light clouds coloured by the dawn are not 
pinker than her eyes and muzzle. As to her house, 
the entrance of which was disguised by a clump 
of dry grass, it was a pattern of neatness. 
Satin-coat was a very painstaking little mouse; a 



202 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



provident little mouse, too. And that had proved a 
fortunate thing for her this severe winter. Her 
storeroom was full of provisions prudently 
amassed in summer, and her house had not been 
visited by famine or distress. And yet Satin-coat 
was not happy. She was tired of living alone. In 
summer, when she had much to do, she found it 
still tolerable. But in winter, when her only occu- 
pation was to nibble the fruits of her thrift, it 
seemed sadly monotonous. On this lovely morning 
she more than ever bewailed her loneliness. A 
happy band of children passed near her, on the 
road. Little girls and boys, with their hands full of 
gifts ; they were showing one another their wooden 
horses and their dolls. A mad desire seized little 
Satin-coat to run up to them, to share their joy — 
But she was afraid: "They are the children of 
men, " she said, " perhaps they would hurt 
me." 

She proceeded to make her morning toilet ; and 
as with the sun climbing higher in the sky the 
weather became decidedly inviting, she deter- 
mined to take a walk. Her little red feet left a 
light track, like a bird's, on the soft snow. From 



GREY-COAT AND SATIN-COAT 203 

time to time she stopped to wonder at the icicles 
hanging on the rocks. It was very still. No bird- 
song, no brawling of brooks, no humming of bees. 
Satin-coat did not meet a soul, not even a fly or 
an ant. The silence and the loneliness saddened 
her to such a degree that she thought of turning 
back and going home, when she heard a faint 
noise. She sat upon her hind-legs, to listen, and 
perceived that the noise came from beneath a 
thick snow-laden bush. Satin-coat went to it, and 
the following is what she saw: A grey mouse was 
turning over the dead leaves and furiously scratch- 
ing the earth. She was so absorbed that she did 
not notice the presence of Satin-coat. Presently, 
Satin-coat said to her : " Good-morning ! " The 
little mouse, who had been digging, started in 
affright, but promptly recovered her self-posses- 
sion, seeing that it was no hostile animal address- 
ing her. " Good-morning ! " she replied dejectedly. 
And Satin-coat saw that she looked thin and hag- 
gard, and that her claws were bleeding. "What 
are you doing there?" said the white mouse to 
the grey, "and what is your name?" The other 
answered: "My name is Grey-coat, and I am 



204 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



looking for food under the bushes, where there 
is no snow and where the ground is not frozen as 
hard as elsewhere. But I find so little, I am nearly 
starved. With the best I could do, I have found 
nothing this morning but the carcass of a dead 
cock-chafer." "Poor little thing," replied Satin- 
coat. "What hardships have you endured! Come 
with me; I live near by; we will share lodging and 
provisions." As you can well imagine, Grey-coat 
did not wait for a second invitation. Satin-coat 
took her home with her and spread lunch before 
her: two hazelnuts, six beechnuts and a dozen 
apple seeds, remarking however that she did not 
set such a sumptuous table every day. At the end 
of a week of good fare and good care, Grey-coat 
was completely herself again and had forgotten 
all her troubles. She recovered her former light - 
heartedness, and while it snowed outside and the 
wind rattled in the trees, she entertained Satin- 
coat with interminable stories and all sorts of 
amusing songs. And so time passed like a dream. 
For nothing in the world would Satin-coat have 
given up Grey-coat. She was delighted to share 
her supplies with her and often deprived herself 



GREY-COAT AND SATIN-COAT 205 

of things that her stores might not give out before 
spring. 

The thaw finally arrived, the icicles melted 
off the trees, the earth reappeared from under the 
snow, and in sunny nooks the violets began to 
prick through the soil. From morning until eve- 
ning the friends ran about, played together, 
picked up a few earthworms, a few butterfly- 
eggs, or nibbled the tender shoots. The birds 
were building their nests, everything was return- 
ing to life. An unmingled joy it was. 

Soon came summer. Then Satin-coat, as was 
her custom, cleaned her granary and began to lay 
in stores. She gathered in corn, vetches, myrtle- 
berries, and other good things. As for Grey-coat, 
she thought this premature. She said: "Let us 
enjoy the charm of these summer days. Let us 
sleep in the shade, let us drink the dew, and let 
us eat abundantly of everything. We shall have 
time, in the autumn, to replenish our larder. The 
continual cares of housekeeping would spoil our 
pleasure." 

This language vexed Satin-coat. She knew that 
autumn is likely to bring unpleasant weather, 



206 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

that inundations, fogs and early frosts must be 
counted with. Moreover, she loved to work and 
was sorry to discover that her friend was lazy. 
But she did not suffer this to make her cross. To 
avoid reproaches, she got into the way of going 
food-hunting by herself and sleeping away from 
home. A rupture between the two friends might 
have been feared, when an unexpected event 
changed everything by changing Grey-coat's 
whole disposition. 

One day, in her aimless wanderings, Grey-coat 
passed near a mouse-hole and noticed a few drops 
of blood near the entrance. "A crime has been 
committed here," she said, "let us go in and 
see. . . ." No sooner said than done. In the 
hole, she found a nest with five tiny mice. Their 
mother had been eaten by an owl the night be- 
fore; the poor little things squealed lamentably 
and suffered keen pangs of hunger. At this spec- 
tacle Grey-coat's heart fairly broke. She immedi- 
ately went and got a few millet seeds, masticated 
them and gave them to the baby orphans to eat; 
this she did over and over again, until the poor 
little starving creatures had had their fill. Then 



GREY-COAT AND SATIN-COAT 207 

she said to them : " Stay where you are, for fear of 
the owls; I will come again to-morrow." 

Grey-coat hurried to Satin-coat, told her the 
whole story and begged her to adopt the orphans. 
" How can you think of such a thing ? " answered 
Satin-coat. "It is all I can do to provide for the 
two of us, how can I gather stores sufficient for 
winter, with five mouths more to feed?" "Fear 
nothing," said Grey-coat, "I will help you, I 
promise." "On that condition," said Satin-coat, 
"I consent. . . . And I earnestly hope to see 
you do as you say ! " 

The five orphans were accordingly brought to 
Satin-coat's dwelling, and from that day forth, 
Grey-coat, so thoughtless before, became, for the 
love of her small proteges, the most industrious of 
mice. She might be seen up before sunrise, gath- 
ering, gleaning, bringing in every description of 
food. In order to stow all the riches resulting from 
her labour, they had to build another barn under 
the nearest rock. 

As for Satin-coat, she was happier than can be 
expressed. Not only need she no longer, sur- 
rounded as she was by a growing family, fear the 



208 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

lonesomeness of long winters, but she could listen 
with unmixed delight to Grey-coat's merry tales 
and songs, reflecting that this inexhaustibly good- 
humoured and vivacious little person was at once 
a heart of gold and an indefatigable worker. 

THE STORY OF A TOO-DEARLY 
LOVED RABBIT 

TOWARD the middle of December, Mon- 
sieur Yillard, a notary and a model 
Papa, endeavoured with delicate cir- 
cuitousness to find out what, in the manner of a 
Christmas-gift, would be most acceptable to each 
one of his children. He soon learned that little 
Martha, his third daughter, aged seven, would 
like nothing in the world so much as a white rab- 
bit. And as nothing in the child's conduct would 
have justified a refusal, and as the price of a rab- 
bit does not exceed the means of a notary, and as 
the family had the use of a garden in which the 
rabbit-hutch might be placed, Martha got her 
rabbit. 

He was an unqualified delight! He had snow- 



A TOO-DEARLY LOVED RABBIT 209 



white fur, red eyes, little delicate whiskers and 
pink ears, almost transparent and never still. In 
a few days, he had made the conquest of all the 
hearts in the house, and was an expected guest at 
every festivity. Like an intelligent rabbit, he 
adapted himself to the tastes of each person. He 
was neither over-reserved nor yet importunate. 
When he was not invited, he ran about the garden 
all by himself, made journeys of exploration, nib- 
bled at the bits of grass overlooked by winter. 
But if he received the honour of an invitation, 
he readily accepted, joined in the games, and 
galloped about among the children like a com- 
rade. 

Not long after, little Martha took a bad cold 
and was confined to her bedroom. As she sorely 
missed her pet, she was allowed to have him 
with her every day for a few hours. Martha 
showed him her dolls and put them through the 
ceremonies of the toilet for him to see. As if he 
had understood all about it, he at once devoted 
himself to his own toilet. Sitting up on his hind- 
legs, with his front paws he rubbed his face, 
smoothed his whiskers, brushed his ears. Martha 



210 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

watched him fondly. An idea flashed through her 
mind. "If I should dress him in my doll's 
chothes?" . . . No sooner said than done. 
She undressed her big doll Catherine, who was 
the nurse-doll, and, garment by garment, dressed 
the rabbit in her things. The good little creature 
lent himself to this sport with admirable pa- 
tience. He let himself be handled just like a doll. 
She had put on him all but the cap with the long 
strings. This was difficult on account of his ears. 
"Lay your ears flat, my love," said Martha. The 
rabbit laid his ears flat and she arranged the cap 
on his head. Thus disguised, he went about the 
room, hopping on his hind-legs, amid peals of 
laughter from the whole family. 

Soon Martha, completely recovered, invited 
half a dozen friends to introduce them to her rab- 
bit and show off his accomplishments. She dressed 
him in their presence as a sailor-boy, which be- 
came him wonderfully. But now each one of the 
friends wished in turn to dress him up in some 
costume. He was successively transformed into a 
cook, a chimney-sweep, a Pierrot, a circus-rider, 
and during all these operations he must be hugged, 



A TOO-DEARLY LOVED RABBIT 211 

he must give his paw, he must jump through a 
hoop, and so on. 

Monsieur Villard could overhear all this from 
the next room, which was his study. He remarked 
several times : " Children, you will tire out that 
poor animal and disgust him. Let him go." 

But the children were having too good fun to 
realize that it was less fun for the rabbit. 

Suddenly, just as he had been undressed to be 
dressed again as a policeman, he made one pro- 
digious bound and disappeared in Papa's study. 
At once the children ran after him, looked for 
him everywhere, called him by the tenderest 
names: he was not to be found. He had disap- 
peared and left no trace. 

Martha's grief was extreme. She parted from 
her friends with sobs. The notary said to his 
daughter: "My dear child, you loved that rabbit 
too extravagantly; you burdened him with your 
caresses; you tired him with your play. He fled 
because he could not stand any more. But do not 
grieve. Perhaps, when he is rested, he will come 
back. . . ." 

That same evening the notary started on a rail- 



212 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



way journey of several days. He said to his ser- 
vant : " Be sure, Joseph, you do not forget to take 
to the train the foot -muff out of my study." Jo- 
seph faithfully took the foot-muff, in which his 
master was so fond of warming his feet this cold 
weather. When the train had started, the notary 
took off his boots, and thrust his feet into his good 
bear-skin bag. What was his astonishment to feel 
something alive squirming under his toes. He 
uttered a cry and quickly pulled out his feet, sup- 
posing it to be a rat. Upon investigation, he dis- 
covered, huddled in the far end of the foot-muff, 
trembling with fright . . . the rabbit! "Ah, 
there you are, you sly fellow!" he said, laughing 
aloud. Then he took Mr. Rabbit by the ears, drew 
him from his hiding-place, and stroked him to 
calm his fears. 

The train was racing through the night, fairly 
licking up the miles. Monsieur Villard was think- 
ing of Ins little girl, whom he had left in tears and 
who certainly could not yet have gone to sleep. 
Beside him on the seat sat the rabbit, in a ball, 
with his ears flat on his back. Perhaps he too was 
thinking of his little mistress ? Without the least 



A TOO-DEARLY LOVED RABBIT 213 

doubt Martha was thinking of him and of him 
only. She was fancying him lost, eaten by dogs, 
cooked with onions in somebody's stew-pan. She 
was haunted by the most horrible imaginings. She 
dozed for one moment: whereupon she dreamed 
she saw her little friend's fur coat hanging from 
the back of a rabbit-skin seller. And it was all her 
fault! Ah, if she could just have him back, how 
careful she would be to love him without bother- 
ing him! Alas, she dare not dwell upon the hope 
of his return. 

In the morning she went about her tasks, grief- 
stricken, with the face of one who has lost a thing 
on which her whole heart was set. Every one was 
very sorry for her. . . . 

Toward nine o'clock a telegraph-messenger 
brought the following dispatch : " Rabbit found 
hidden in foot-muff. Will send home in basket. 
Papa." 

At this announcement, Martha flung herself in 
her mother's arms and exclaimed, weeping for 
joy: "Oh, Mama, how happy I am, and you 
may be sure that I shall hereafter love him more 
sensibly ! " 



214 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



TWO FRIENDS 

THERE was once a little mouse, who, 
though she had never harmed any one, 
nor so much as wished any one the least 
harm, was the object of the most frightful perse- 
cutions. When she took refuge in the houses, she 
fell under the claws of the cats. When she took to 
the fields, she was tracked by the dogs. No hole so 
deep that she could feel safe in it from them. Not 
content with pursuing her one at a time through 
underground passages, these terriers would chase 
her in packs, and the boys would do the same. 
Certainly, big creatures must be cowards, to join 
together in hunting down a defenceless victim! 
Such fiendish ferocity had reduced the poor mouse 
to despair. 

When night came, she rejoiced. " The darkness 
will cover me," she thought. " For a few hours the 
wicked creatures will not be able to see, and their 
victims can sleep quietly. . . ^ " 

Alas, she was counting without the owls who 
can see at midnight, whose downy wings make no 
noise as they fly, and who gobble you up before 



TWO FRIENDS 



215 



you know they are there. No, one could not pos- 
sibly be more unhappy than that little mouse. 

One day when, crouching beneath a thistle- 
leaf, she was musing upon her sad fate, still trem- 
bling from past frights and terrified already at 
future dangers, she just escaped being crushed by 
the hoof of a donkey, who had stepped close 
against her flimsy shelter. Horror nailed her to 
the spot. She could not move a paw. She could 
only, through a rent in her roof, watch an enor- 
mous beast, a veritable mountain to her, who was 
hungrily browsing. The breath of his nostrils 
reached her like warm steam, and in the neigh- 
bourhood of those sharp-edged teeth, cutting off 
stems and flowers, the little rodent felt that the 
end was near. At that moment, the donkey, with 
a greedy lick of his tongue, drew to him the 
thistle-leaf, which disappeared in his powerful 
jaws. Thereupon, amazed, he stopped short and 
looked hard at an object on the ground which 
appeared to interest him. He had caught sight of 
the mouse. His great black eye brooded upon her 
with gentle kindliness. 

For he was a great-hearted donkey. A donkey 

i 

1 1 

! 
I 



216 



WAYSIDE SERMONS 



acquainted, indeed, with ill-usage and with hun- 
ger, but as gentle as he was unfortunate. As he 
had no friend on earth, he had long been looking 
for one. When he saw the poor mouse, grey like 
himself, with her little scared face and her whole 
body shaken by insane terror, he felt boundless 
compassion stirring within him. Softly he began 
to lick her back, to inspire confidence by every 
sort of friendly demonstration, as awkward as 
sincere. 

Honest and unhappy hearts readily understand 
each other. The mouse knew that she had met 
with an upright donkey, and the donkey said to 
himself: " I have found a friend." He tried to per- 
suade the timid and troubled little creature to 
confide herself to his protection, and repeatedly 
bent down toward her one of his roomy ears. The 
mouse finally understood that she was invited to 
enter it. She gathered boldness at last to climb up 
into it and take possession of that hospitable and 
warm abode. 

" But I shall be terribly in your way, in here," 
sighed the mouse. 

" Not at all — not at all ! " said the donkey in 



TWO FRIENDS 



217 



his thick voice; "I can hardly feel you. Nowhere 
else could I hear your voice so plainly; nor could 
any hiding-place be safer for you." 

From that day forth, an alliance was concluded 
between the two companions. 

When the donkey was grazing or resting, the 
mouse would come out of her little lodging, 
would walk on his head, his neck, his back, in 
the sunshine, with a thousand pretty capers. 
Sometimes she would slide down to the ground 
along his legs and run about him in the pasture. 
For the first time she enjoyed the delight of being 
free from fear. If a rat-terrier showed his face, if 
a cat mewed or an owl hooted, quickly she went 
back to her stronghold. Sometimes, perched on the 
tip of his ear, she looked off over the country and 
kept watch. She enjoyed the most varied specta- 
cle, which pleased her far more than crawling 
under the earth through subterranean passages 
dug by the moles beneath the grass-roots. 

But when the donkey groaned beneath the 
cudgel or the harness, she comforted him and by 
sympathy shared his burden; she softly told him 
delightful stories, and sang in his ear the sort of 



218 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



song that gives cheer and courage. When she 
heard blows pelting on the back of her friend, 
she whispered good words to him. Men insulted 
him, she consoled him; they called him worthless 
ass, sluggard, old bag of bones, — she said to him: 
"Don't feel bad, don't mind; all they say is lies 
and injustice; I know how noble and generous 
you are!" 

For nothing in the world would the donkey 
have consented to part from his little friend. Her 
dear voice, become sweet and familiar in his ear, 
was compensation for the cruelties of fate. Be- 
cause of her, though the sun beat down upon him, 
though the hills to climb were steep, though he 
were surrounded by threatening voices and the 
cracking of a whip, he nursed a secret joy in his 
heart. 

. . . When the poor donkey's last hour was 
come, his friend did not forsake him, but entered 
into it at the same time. 

And upon their unknown grave, every spring- 
time sees two flowers unfold, whose secret is 
known to the evening breeze alone. 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 219 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 




E was a true gardener, and flowers 
for him were living persons. He knew 
their nature and understood their 



language. He might be overheard conversing with 
them in the garden-walks. Morning and evening 
he said good-morning and good-evening to them. 
If he had not feared to commit the sin of idola- 
try, he would have been inclined to bow before 
his wonderful rose-tree, the " Giant of Battles," 
as the Cure bows in passing before the altar of the 
Virgin Mary. Indeed, I cannot be perfectly sure 
he never did it, 

Never would he have been caught stolidly 
sprinkling the many -tinted flower-beds while his 
wits were wool-gathering afar. As he watered his 
carnations, his marguerites and pansies, it was his 
amiable custom to talk to them. 

"There, my pretty ones, there's for you. It is 
Jean bringing you drink. You have found the 
heat of the day burdensome, haven't you ? Drink, 
then, drink, charming creatures, drink as much as 
you please," 



*20 WAYSIDE SERMONS 

And, as a consequence, everything smiled to 
him. He was lucky at his trade. Hardly ever did 
any budding or grafting of his fail to thrive. He 
brought good luck to the seeds he sowed. His 
asparagus grew like mushrooms. His lettuce was 
the ideal of crispness. From the rosy muscatel 
grapes on the vine-arbour to the obscurest cucum- 
ber, everything raised by him bore the stamp of 
distinguished excellence. 

Every one wished to secure for his garden the 
care, or at least the supervision, of Monsieur Jean. 
He was consulted with regard to the diseases of 
trees and vineyards, the best methods of getting 
rid of ants, moles, earwigs. He was asked for 
seeds, recipes, slips. 

In short, it was he made the weather in his vil- 
lage, and most fellows in his place would have 
become vain. But he remained simple and kind 
as in the past, and, whatever happened, was per- 
petually filled with jovial good-will. He was par- 
ticularly considerate of the suffering. Here is one 
instance of a hundred. His peaches were the glory 
of dinners ; his pears had no rivals. They were paid 
their weight in gold. But he often said : " Here is 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 221 

exquisite fruit, a true gift of God's. It should only 
be served to persons able to see its points, to the 
right sort of people, honest and laborious. What 
a pity that so many must bite into it without realiz- 
ing its worth, that it should sometimes be eaten 
by good-for-nothings, who get up and go to bed 
without having done anything worth the while." 

Whereupon, for his own comfort, he would take 
a plateful of grapes to the sick, too poor to buy it ; 
or, over the garden-hedge, he would pelt with 
cherries the little bareheaded, barefoot children. 

Jean had as neighbour an old friend of his fam- 
ily named Nicholas, an old solider and a black- 
smith, hunchbacked from having hammered too 
much iron, and nearly blind from having looked 
at the fire too long. Once when he was lamenting 
over his infirm old age, as he sat soliloquizing on 
a boundary-stone hard against Jean's garden, the 
latter, unseen on the other side of the wall, picked 
a golden pear from the trellis and passed it to the 
veteran, saying: "There you are, Father Nicho- 
las, groaning as if you were a forsaken old dog. 
You are not, however, as witness this pear which 
you are going to eat, such as would make the 



222 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



mouth of a duchess water. Go on — don't be 
shy ! . . . Bite into it boldly, and give me news 
of it!" 

When the old man had eaten the pear, he said: 
" Certainly it was good. That I can't deny. But I 
know something even better, Jean." 

" I don't believe you. WTiat do you mean ? " 

"Your heart, my son. God's truth, you don't 
meet that sort every day. . . ." 

The gardener was thirty years of age. It was 
generally hoped he would find a good wife, of a 
disposition resembling his own, and more than 
one pretty village girl dreamed of becoming the 
gardener's missis. 

Jean was in no haste to marry. Not that he was 
not in love. He could never forget that he had 
seen Suzanne, the daughter of Jacob, the miller. 
But Father Jacob was too well provided with this 
world's goods to bestow his daughter upon a 
humble gardener. And then, let it be said under 
breath, Jean was afraid of a wife putting a stop 
to all folly on his part. And the folly he clung to 
was giving away fruit over the garden- wall. Cer- 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 223 

tainly, a good housewife, exact and scrupulous, 
could not have lent her countenance to such ex- 
travagance. 

But it is written that a man may not live, nor 
act, in his own way, without his fellow-men band- 
ing themselves together against his peace. That 
is what Monsieur Jean discovered. Why did he 
not marry ? Was it to be tolerated ? Did he not 
give occasion for gossip ? Did he not, at least, seem 
to regard with disdain the village girls among 
whom he had been brought up, good and charm- 
ing girls, who had not wholly concealed from him 
their willingness ? Decidedly, he must put an end 
to this scandal of celibacy. 

An orphan from infancy, Jean had been adopted 
by every one of his fellow-citizens. He stood in 
no lack of fatherly advice. He could not meet an 
elderly man or woman without the conversation 
presently turning upon marriage, when the lauds 
would be sung of this or that candidate. The good- 
natured gardener listened to them all, and re- 
mained single. None the less he had for some time 
been pondering a scheme for obtaining a little 
rest. He was one day hoeing a row of lettuces, 



224 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



when Father Nicholas came into the garden. 
Every one knew how highly Jean thought of him. 
He was coming, primed and drilled by a whole 
group of conspirators, who had placed their last 
hope in him. As he had never yet breathed a word 
to Jean on the subject of marriage, he would no 
doubt succeed in securing a hearing. Hobbling, 
feeling his way cautiously with his stick, like a 
diplomat sounding his ground, he came forward 
between the garden-beds, and the tassel on the 
tip of his pointed cap bobbed and beat wildly 
against the back of his head — like an after- 
thought. The gardener begged him to sit down, 
and, feeling something unusual in the air, he 
said: 

" Are you well, Father Nicholas ? What is the 
matter?" 

"Nothing, Jean; I wish to talk to you seriously 
about yourself." 

"I am listening, Nicholas. Speak." 
" I knew your great-grandfather." 
"Yes, Father Nicholas." 
" I knew your grandfather." 
"So you did." 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 225 
" I knew your father." 

" Of course, good old Nicholas, you knew them 
all ; you know that I cherish their memory in you ; 
what further ? " 

"All those good men were married, and you, 
their descendant, you obstinately remain single. 
Jean, you know that I love you ; there's not a bet- 
ter fellow than yourself; but what you are doing 
is wrong. I must tell you at last what I think of it. 
This state of things must end, or else you must tell 
the reason." 

" I prefer to tell you the reason, Father Nicho- 
las. You have never wearied me with talk upon 
this weighty subject. I will therefore not conceal 
from you what I have so far kept to myself. There is 
a secret in my life, forming a strange complication 
with regard to marriage. I have a daughter, yes, 
my poor Nicholas, a daughter, and, what makes 
the matter worse, her mother is unknown to me. 
Ask me no more; you are however authorized to 
repeat what I have told you. Then we shall see." 

Dumbfounded at this revelation, Father Nicho- 
las left, hanging his head, his back more bowed 
than ever. 



226 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



Next day his bit of news was circulating in 
every direction, and gossip was busy enough: 

"A daughter? . . . That pattern of a 
man ? . . . Should you have believed it ? Ah, 
Monsieur Jean, you were a sly one ! . . ." 

And conjectures flew thick, with regard to the 
origin of the child, its age, the place where it lived 
in concealment, and particularly its mother's 
name. Father Nicholas thought he should lose 
his mind, so was he plied with questions. But 
from that day forth, the gardener was left un- 
troubled. 

Yes, that excellent Monsieur Jean had a daugh- 
ter. Nothing more true. As for the mother, pro- 
digious as it may seem, he did not know her, had 
never seen, frequented, nor met her. Then how, 
under what circumstances, by what miracle had 
he become a papa ? An adoption, no doubt. Not at 
all. But — you shall hear. 

In the spring of the year before, the gardener 
was grafting cherry-trees, in the orchard of a gen- 
tleman, daft on the subject. The cherry-trees were 
tall fine trees, but their small sour cherries did 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 227 

not please the owner. He wished to substitute 
bigaroons for them. While the gardener, high up 
in the tree, was sawing the branches, the pro- 
prietor chatted like a magpie below, unfolding 
theories, comparing the merits of Fougerolles, 
Klingenthal and Black-Forest cherries. Suddenly, 
bewildered no doubt by his too-talkative compa- 
nion, Jean slipped on a branch, fell and broke his 
leg. The next day when his limb had been set 
and Jean found himself, at the season when work 
was most pressing, a fixture for long weeks in his 
bed, sadness overcame him. He thought of his 
uncared-for garden, his suffering seedlings, the 
tediousness of seclusion. It was only natural. In 
spite of which, the poor boy was vexed with him- 
self for his lack of resignation, and said : " Come, 
Jean, courage! Here you are moping. Is a bit 
of ill-luck a thing to wonder at in this world of 
ours r 

He was still chiding himself when old Mari- 
anne, Nicholas's wife, came in. She was deaf and 
always talked in a shout, lest she should not be 
heard. 

"I have come to inquire of your health, Mon- 



228 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



sieur Jean, and I bring you a fresh egg. My big 
black hen has just laid it. You will eat it cooked 
in its shell, and it will do you good. My black hen 
was hatched on a Good Friday, and the eggs of 
that sort of hen have very particular virtues." 

When the old woman had left, a whimsical idea 
flashed through the gardener's head. Without 
saying anything to any one, he placed the egg in 
the bed beside him. "The place is good and 
warm," he said, " and I shall be here a long time. 
In twenty-one days, if I brood faithfully, a chick 
will come out of it. . . ." 

From that moment forth, during the long 
monotonous days, instead of thinking of his leg 
or his neglected garden, Jean thought of the wee 
germ of life quickening beside him. About the 
nineteenth day, he took the egg and held it to his 
ear. Faint stirrings informed him that he had 
been successful. 

" It is alive — it is alive ! " he exclaimed. " Soon 
I shall see it ! " 

Early on the twenty -first day, he noticed an 
almost imperceptible crack in the egg-shell. The 
moment of hatching was at hand. He then took 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 229 

the egg and placed it on his quilt to watch what 
should happen. 

The crack, a mere hair-line, seemed in turn to 
widen and close again. The egg moved very 
slightly; a tiny sound of peeping was audible. 
The gardener never took his eyes off it. Abruptly, 
the crack widened and the egg split open. One 
half rolled over on its side. The other adhered to 
the posterior portion of the chick. Jean dexter- 
ously unglued it. Then he took up the newly born, 
still unsteady on its feet. 

" Welcome, cock or hen; I will love you, care for 
you, you shall be my child." 

And, from that day, he no longer felt the tedium 
of long hours. He had an amusement right at hand. 
From morning until night, there were his nurs- 
ling's diverting ways to cheer him. It ran about 
the room as if it had never done anything else. It 
ate bread sopped in milk, and when it had fin- 
ished, it wiped its bill. At night it was packed in a 
woolen sock and placed in an old wooden shoe, 
near the bed. 

The accident had happened early in March. 
Toward the end of April, Jean was able, on 



2S0 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



crutches, to go in the garden. Behind him trotted 
and peeped his chick. When the weather was 
cold, the little thing complained aloud. Jean at 
once took it up and hid it under his waistcoat. 
He liked the sensation of that tiny heart beating 
against his breast. 

The chick became a young hen. Never had the 
gardener told any one of his exploit. He was far 
from thinking that one day she whom he called 
his daughter would be of sendee to him in raising 
the rigorous siege by which it had been deter- 
mined to constrain him to marry. 

Weeks had passed since his confession to the 
blacksmith. The gardener, at first delighted with 
peace restored, had ended by suffering from his 
isolation and the indifference now surrounding 
him. Singular reports were circulated with regard 
to him, and his character went down in the esti- 
mation of many. Nicholas was heart-broken. His 
young neighbour said to him one day, not with- 
out bitterness: 

"Well, Father Nicholas, what do you say to 
all this ? Since my handsome fellow-townswomen 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 231 

only needed to know I had a daughter, to care no 
more about me, they cannot have cared much 
about me from the first." 

" Alas, you speak true ! " said the old man. 

But both were wrong. That same day, the doc- 
tor, called in for Suzanne Jacob, who was seri- 
ously ill, had said to the miller, shrugging his 
shoulders : 

"It is a very especial illness, and one for which 
there is no drug at the apothecary's. Your daugh- 
ter has a secret sorrow; at her age, it must be a 
love-sorrow. Induce her to unburden her heart to 
you, prevail upon her by gentleness and coaxing, 
otherwise I will not answer for the consequences." 

It was not an easy matter to obtain that confes- 
sion. Jacob had a hard heart and his daughter 
feared him. The rough, peremptory peasant was 
forced to writhe in proper form and find in his 
paternal heart such words as would have melted 
a stone, before Suzanne, in a burst of tears, con- 
fided to him the secret which was eating her life 
away: 

" That poor Jean ! Such an honest heart and so 
unhappy ! " 



232 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



Oh, she was not one of those who had encour- 
aged him before, and now turned their backs on 
him and gave him vicious stabs with their tongues. 
To know that he was pointed at, ill-spoken of, 
was martyrdom to her. 

That his daughter should marry the gardener, 
much less wealthy than herself, burdened fur- 
thermore with a child of an unknown mother, 
was certainly a bitter pill for Jacob to swallow. 
But he was too fond of his daughter, the situa- 
tion was too serious, to hesitate. He clasped his 
daughter to his breast and said to her: 

" My child, be comforted ; if you will only live, 
everything may be arranged. Do not let sorrow 
prey upon you any more, and leave everything to 
me. 

Through the mediation of Father Nicholas, 
Jean was sounded, and, a few days later, Jacob 
the miller, after preliminary intercourse with the 
gardener, brought the young people into each 
others presence. Their interview took place in 
the garden. 

"I am deeply touched by your sentiments, 
Mademoiselle Suzanne," said Jean, "much more 



THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER 233 

deeply than I can express. My misfortune touches 
you, whilst others it turns from me. By that token 
true affection may be told. Let me however warn 
you; you are taxing your strength too far. You 
would consent, heartily, to become the wife of a 
man who has a daughter. But you do not know, 
alas, what kind of a daughter she is. I must tell 
you, she has tastes and habits which render her 
education terribly repugnant. She cackles from 
morning till night, delights to scratch in the dust, 
hunts and greedily gobbles up insects' eggs and 
earthworms, and, as a favourite occupation, dis- 
ports herself upon the dunghill. What woman 
under these circumstances would be willing to 
share my sad fate ? " 

"Do not speak like that, Monsieur Jean. The 
more unhappy you are, the more I wish to take 
my share of your burden. I will do what I can for 
that poor unnatural child, and who knows but 
between us we may make something proper out 
of her?" 

At these words Jean the gardener opend a door 
and called: "Chick, chick, chick!" 
A charming chicken came running, black and 



234 WAYSIDE SERMONS 



white, with a scarlet crest, quick eyes and yellow 
feet. She jumped up on her Papa's arm, who pre- 
sented her, saying: 

"This is my daughter. . . . " 

Two words of explanation, and laughter rang 
loud, and joy reigned such as can hardly be 
described. . . . 

When the story became known, there was more 
than one sulky, spited look among the pretty 
peasant-girls. But the true friends of Jean laughed 
heartily, happy to see him converted to wedlock, 
happy especially to know the whole truth con- 
cerning his mysterious offspring. 

On the wedding-day, the wedding-breakfast 
bill of fare bore as its first item the not wholly 
appropriate article: 

"Boiled eggs, laid by the gardener's daughter." 

THE END 



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